Classroom Costa Rica

We all had a topic before we went to Costa Rica, and I chose frogs. At first frogs seemed like a pretty easy topic-frogs are suppose to be everywhere in Costa Rica. But I only saw one species of toad. It was big and lumpy and looked like it would go into a witches cauldron in a storybook. This was disappointing because while looking through book and surfing the Internet about rain forests  frogs was one of the major topics.
Frogs are such a popular image because they are so funky looking, with all their different colors and poisons that could kill you. But the truth is, most of the frogs live in the canopies of the cloud forest, and some of them never leave for their entire lives. So even though it was a little disappointing to only see this one kind of toad, it was not very likely at all to see anything else.
One thing that I should mention is the Golden Toad. In this case it wasn’t just an unfortunate discovery not to see one. Thanks to global warming they have gone extinct. The main reason they have gone extinct is because of a fungus that came when the weather started to get hotter. As they were dying off the frogs didn’t always find mates. So when they died they couldn’t leave offspring behind.
While working on our projects we were expected to have questions, and to translate them into Spanish. One of my questions was: do the local people need to be cautioned about poisonous frogs? At least twenty kinds of frogs in Central and South America have developed a deathly poison. Their alkaloid poisons are so toxic that they can paralyze a large bird or small monkey immediately. I wondered if parents might feel worried about their children playing outside. My view did change because the only frog-like thing that I saw was a brown toad, and the worst it could do to you is irritate your eyes.

-Ashleigh

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