Rare sharks, toads, rhinos and bears are among the endangered species in the news this week. Hammer Time: David Shiffman offers 10 reasons why great and scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna mokarran and S. lewini) deserve Endangered Species Act protections and encourages people to take direct action in support of a move to do just that. [...]

Glassfrogs, or centrolenids, are wide-skulled, long-limbed arboreal little frogs (SVL 20-60 mm), unique to the Central and South American cloud and rain forests. Not until 1951 did this group get recognised as a distinct and nameable entity: prior to this, species within the group (known to science since 1872) had been classified as part of [...]

As you’ll know if you’ve been following Tet Zoo for any length of time, I’ve been slowly working my way through the toads of the world for the past few years – yes, all of them, more or less. Seeing as there are about 540 living toad species, this may take a while. I’m currently [...]

More toads! (for previous articles in the series – required reading if you’re really interested – see the links below). In the previous article I introduced the idea that a large number of (mostly) poorly known African toads might be close relatives: they generally group together in cladograms, and – even when they don’t – they [...]

One of my long-term goals at Tet Zoo has been to complete my series of articles on the toads of the world… actually, this started out as a short-term goal, but it ended up taking rather longer than expected. This enormous, near-globally distributed anuran clade (properly termed Bufonidae) encompasses incredible variation and a huge amount [...]