WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.779 I want you to picture the most organized person 00:00:02.779 --> 00:00:05.740 you know. Oh, I know exactly the type. Right. 00:00:05.839 --> 00:00:08.720 The kind of person who color codes their bookshelf, 00:00:08.839 --> 00:00:12.900 has a specific drawer just for batteries, and 00:00:12.900 --> 00:00:16.359 never, ever has a mispile. No junk drawer whatsoever. 00:00:16.780 --> 00:00:19.359 Exactly. And that is, I think, how we usually 00:00:19.359 --> 00:00:22.420 imagine science. Yeah, that's the ideal. Specifically, 00:00:22.420 --> 00:00:25.280 the field of taxonomy, you know, the science 00:00:25.280 --> 00:00:28.879 of naming things. We imagine it as this rigid, 00:00:29.140 --> 00:00:31.879 Latin filled world where absolutely everything 00:00:31.879 --> 00:00:35.640 has a perfect, permanent place. A place for everything 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:38.320 and everything in its place. That is definitely 00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:40.859 what we strive for. Right. But then you open 00:00:40.859 --> 00:00:42.859 the file for today's subject and you see something 00:00:42.859 --> 00:00:44.920 that honestly, it looks like a clerical error. 00:00:45.399 --> 00:00:47.740 Or maybe a bad joke. Yeah. You see the scientific 00:00:47.740 --> 00:00:49.659 name of an animal, but the first part of the 00:00:49.659 --> 00:00:51.659 name, the genus, is sitting there inside double 00:00:51.659 --> 00:00:54.079 quotation marks. Actual air quotes on the official 00:00:54.079 --> 00:00:57.439 scientific record. It's like walking into a hospital 00:00:57.439 --> 00:00:59.700 and seeing a guy wearing a badge that says surgeon 00:00:59.700 --> 00:01:02.119 in quotation marks. Yeah. You immediately turn 00:01:02.119 --> 00:01:04.079 around. You completely run away. You think, okay, 00:01:04.120 --> 00:01:06.299 I am absolutely not letting that guy operate 00:01:06.299 --> 00:01:08.680 on me. And honestly, that instinct is pretty 00:01:08.680 --> 00:01:11.420 correct here. In this case, those quotation marks 00:01:11.420 --> 00:01:14.180 are doing a massive amount of heavy lifting. 00:01:14.319 --> 00:01:16.819 Yeah. They're this tiny piece of punctuation 00:01:16.819 --> 00:01:18.780 that represents about 80 years of confusion, 00:01:19.019 --> 00:01:23.000 debate, and essentially scientific shrugging. 00:01:23.079 --> 00:01:26.219 And that is our mission for this deep dive. We 00:01:26.219 --> 00:01:29.079 are looking at a frog technically called Hyla 00:01:29.079 --> 00:01:32.640 nice fori. Well, Hyla in quotes. Right. It's 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:35.180 also known perhaps incorrectly, which we'll get 00:01:35.180 --> 00:01:39.040 to, as the Colombian backpack frog. And we are 00:01:39.040 --> 00:01:41.459 going to unpack why a frog collected way back 00:01:41.459 --> 00:01:44.140 in the 1940s is currently sitting in what I can 00:01:44.140 --> 00:01:46.579 only really describe as taxonomic purgatory. 00:01:46.840 --> 00:01:48.599 It really is a ghost story. It's a detective 00:01:48.599 --> 00:01:51.760 story and a lesson in how messy science can actually 00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:54.719 be all rolled into one little amphibian. We've 00:01:54.719 --> 00:01:56.700 got the files right here. We're pulling from 00:01:56.700 --> 00:01:59.459 scientific classification records, IUCN conservation 00:01:59.459 --> 00:02:02.400 data, and taxonomic studies that span from 1970 00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:05.959 all the way to 2017. A huge timeline. It is. 00:02:06.060 --> 00:02:08.139 And the headline here isn't just that we can't 00:02:08.139 --> 00:02:10.819 find the frog in the wild today. It's that even 00:02:10.819 --> 00:02:14.400 when we had the frog in a jar, we apparently 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:16.539 had no idea what we were looking at. That's the 00:02:16.539 --> 00:02:19.800 crux of it. It completely challenges the whole 00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:22.599 idea that once a species is discovered and named, 00:02:22.759 --> 00:02:25.159 the book is closed. Right. In this case, the 00:02:25.159 --> 00:02:27.259 book was never really finished. So let's start 00:02:27.259 --> 00:02:30.400 with the air quotes. Hyla, nice for you. Visually 00:02:30.400 --> 00:02:34.939 on the page, it's Hyla. H -Y -L -A, surrounded 00:02:34.939 --> 00:02:38.219 by quotes. Now, I did a little digging, and hyla 00:02:38.219 --> 00:02:41.280 seems like the John Smith of frog names. It's 00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:43.439 everywhere. That is a very fair assessment. Hyla 00:02:43.439 --> 00:02:46.099 is the type genus for the family hylidae. So 00:02:46.099 --> 00:02:48.379 if you close your eyes and picture a generic 00:02:48.379 --> 00:02:51.159 tree frog. Green stins, sticky toe pads. Exactly. 00:02:51.219 --> 00:02:54.090 Sitting on a leaf. You're picturing a hyla. But 00:02:54.090 --> 00:02:56.169 for a massive chunk of herpetological history, 00:02:56.550 --> 00:03:00.050 hyla was essentially a wastebasket taxon. A wastebasket 00:03:00.050 --> 00:03:02.370 taxon? That sounds incredibly unscientific. Please 00:03:02.370 --> 00:03:04.509 tell me that's not the official term. Well, it 00:03:04.509 --> 00:03:06.949 is an informal term, but every taxonomist knows 00:03:06.949 --> 00:03:08.610 exactly what it means. It's a dumping ground. 00:03:09.310 --> 00:03:13.250 If you found a tree frog and it didn't fit into 00:03:13.250 --> 00:03:15.569 the more specialized groups, like it wasn't weird 00:03:15.569 --> 00:03:18.430 enough or distinct enough, you just chucked it 00:03:18.430 --> 00:03:20.870 into hyla until you figured it out. So it literally 00:03:20.870 --> 00:03:24.310 is... The junk drawer. It's the junk drawer of 00:03:24.310 --> 00:03:26.629 the amphibian world. I love that analogy because 00:03:26.629 --> 00:03:28.889 I absolutely have that drawer in my kitchen. 00:03:28.930 --> 00:03:31.930 It's got, you know, a screwdriver, some old soy 00:03:31.930 --> 00:03:34.150 sauce packets and a battery I'm terrified to 00:03:34.150 --> 00:03:37.490 touch. Exactly. And Hyla is that drawer. But 00:03:37.490 --> 00:03:40.819 in the case of our frog. The quotes add an extra 00:03:40.819 --> 00:03:44.620 layer of we know this is wrong. The quotes are 00:03:44.620 --> 00:03:46.680 a formal admission by the scientific community 00:03:46.680 --> 00:03:49.699 that says, look, we know this frog doesn't actually 00:03:49.699 --> 00:03:51.599 belong in the Hyla drawer. It doesn't fit the 00:03:51.599 --> 00:03:53.680 definition at all. Yeah. But we don't have a 00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:55.500 better drawer for it yet. So we're just parking 00:03:55.500 --> 00:03:57.580 it here. So it's a placeholder. It's the scientific 00:03:57.580 --> 00:03:59.819 equivalent of writing to be determined on a name 00:03:59.819 --> 00:04:02.379 tag. Precisely. The American Museum of Natural 00:04:02.379 --> 00:04:04.780 History's database uses this format. They're 00:04:04.780 --> 00:04:07.240 effectively saying, park this species here, but 00:04:07.240 --> 00:04:09.199 don't get comfortable. It's going to move as 00:04:09.199 --> 00:04:11.539 soon as we figure out what it actually is. But 00:04:11.539 --> 00:04:14.370 here is where the story gets really messy. Because 00:04:14.370 --> 00:04:17.250 before it was parked in this junk drawer, with 00:04:17.250 --> 00:04:19.610 the air quotes, it actually had a very specific, 00:04:19.810 --> 00:04:22.730 very confident identity. It did. We called it 00:04:22.730 --> 00:04:25.610 the Colombian backpack frog. Right. And that 00:04:25.610 --> 00:04:28.350 common name isn't just a cute label. It paints 00:04:28.350 --> 00:04:31.069 a very vivid picture of its biology. It does. 00:04:31.310 --> 00:04:33.389 Backpack frog. Now, I'm assuming they aren't 00:04:33.389 --> 00:04:36.189 carrying tiny hiking gear or, you know, little 00:04:36.189 --> 00:04:39.389 frog maps. No camping gear. The backpack refers 00:04:39.389 --> 00:04:42.560 to a really specific reproductive strategy. These 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:44.199 frogs originally belonged to a family called 00:04:44.199 --> 00:04:48.720 Hemiphractidae, specifically the genus Cryptobotrychus. 00:04:49.699 --> 00:04:51.720 Cryptobotrychus. That sounds extremely metal. 00:04:51.860 --> 00:04:54.420 It translates to hidden frog. But the fascinating 00:04:54.420 --> 00:04:56.959 thing about this group is the mothers. The females 00:04:56.959 --> 00:05:00.779 carry their eggs exposed on their backs. Exposed. 00:05:00.819 --> 00:05:03.120 Yeah. They don't have a pouch like a kangaroo 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:04.920 or even like some other frogs where the skin 00:05:04.920 --> 00:05:06.899 completely grows over the eggs. The eggs are 00:05:06.899 --> 00:05:09.279 just stuck right to the skin on the back, almost 00:05:09.279 --> 00:05:11.930 in like a honeycomb pattern. That is wild. So 00:05:11.930 --> 00:05:13.850 they are literally backpacking their kids around 00:05:13.850 --> 00:05:15.709 the forest, keeping them safe from predators 00:05:15.709 --> 00:05:17.870 in the water. Exactly. It's a high -investment 00:05:17.870 --> 00:05:19.970 strategy. You carry the kids with you. And when 00:05:19.970 --> 00:05:22.730 the specific frog, our quoted Hyla nice foray, 00:05:22.790 --> 00:05:25.189 was first described by researchers Cochran and 00:05:25.189 --> 00:05:27.970 Going back in 1970, they looked at the specimen 00:05:27.970 --> 00:05:30.949 and said, aha. Aha, this is a backpack frog. 00:05:31.170 --> 00:05:33.230 Right. They said this looks like a Cryptobotrychus. 00:05:33.310 --> 00:05:35.889 And they formally named it Cryptobotrychus nicefori. 00:05:35.990 --> 00:05:39.009 So in 1970, the case was completely closed. It 00:05:39.009 --> 00:05:41.329 was a backpack frog, carries eggs on its back. 00:05:41.410 --> 00:05:43.970 The experts had spoken. For almost 40 years, 00:05:44.050 --> 00:05:47.089 yes, that was the accepted reality. If you opened 00:05:47.089 --> 00:05:49.449 a textbook or a field guide in 1990, that is 00:05:49.449 --> 00:05:51.529 exactly what you would see. But then comes the 00:05:51.529 --> 00:05:55.089 year 2009. The plot twist. A group of researchers 00:05:55.089 --> 00:05:57.569 in Fonte Rivero, Rojas -Rinjayak, and Barrio 00:05:57.569 --> 00:06:00.209 Amoros decided to do some spring cleaning in 00:06:00.209 --> 00:06:02.569 the frog archives. Okay. They weren't satisfied 00:06:02.569 --> 00:06:04.870 with the surface -level look. They conducted 00:06:04.870 --> 00:06:07.610 a detailed morphological study. Now, when you 00:06:07.610 --> 00:06:09.389 say morphological, we aren't just talking about, 00:06:09.410 --> 00:06:11.550 is it green or brown? No, we were going deep. 00:06:11.730 --> 00:06:13.509 They were looking at skeletal structures. They 00:06:13.509 --> 00:06:15.589 were looking at the skull. And specifically, 00:06:15.790 --> 00:06:17.610 they were looking at something called vomerine 00:06:17.610 --> 00:06:20.850 teeth. Wait, vomerine teeth? Are those the teeth 00:06:20.850 --> 00:06:23.209 on the roof of the mouth? Correct. Frogs have 00:06:23.209 --> 00:06:25.480 teeth. which always surprises some people. Don't 00:06:25.480 --> 00:06:26.920 get a little terrifying. But the arrangement 00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:29.139 of those teeth and the shape of the skull bones 00:06:29.139 --> 00:06:31.759 are very conservative traits. Meaning they don't 00:06:31.759 --> 00:06:34.339 change much? Exactly. They don't change easily 00:06:34.339 --> 00:06:37.019 over evolution. And what they found was that 00:06:37.019 --> 00:06:40.579 nice fory... had a skull structure and dentition 00:06:40.579 --> 00:06:42.879 that was completely different from the backpack 00:06:42.879 --> 00:06:45.819 frogs. So despite looking like a backpack frog 00:06:45.819 --> 00:06:48.720 on the outside, the bones told a totally different 00:06:48.720 --> 00:06:52.360 story. Exactly. It lacked the key physical characteristics 00:06:52.360 --> 00:06:55.480 of the family hemiphractidae. A backpack frog 00:06:55.480 --> 00:06:58.279 family has a very specific skull shape to support 00:06:58.279 --> 00:07:01.060 their lifestyle. This frog just didn't have it. 00:07:01.139 --> 00:07:03.480 So the Colombian backpack frog is not a backpack 00:07:03.480 --> 00:07:07.449 frog. Technically, no. The 2009 study provided 00:07:07.449 --> 00:07:09.949 solid evidence that it actually belongs to the 00:07:09.949 --> 00:07:12.470 family Hyalidae. It's a true tree frog. Okay, 00:07:12.490 --> 00:07:14.629 hold on. This implies a pretty massive airbag 00:07:14.629 --> 00:07:18.410 in 1970. How do you mistake a tree frog for a 00:07:18.410 --> 00:07:21.649 backpack frog? Did the original scientists just 00:07:21.649 --> 00:07:23.910 not look close enough? Or were they just guessing? 00:07:24.129 --> 00:07:26.730 It's less about negligence and more about a concept 00:07:26.730 --> 00:07:30.310 called convergence. Sometimes nature solves problems 00:07:30.310 --> 00:07:33.750 in very similar ways. Okay. Two unrelated frogs. 00:07:34.300 --> 00:07:36.600 might look similar. They might have similar body 00:07:36.600 --> 00:07:39.500 shapes, similar skin textures, simply because 00:07:39.500 --> 00:07:41.500 they live in similar environments. It's like 00:07:41.500 --> 00:07:44.079 how a dolphin and a shark look similar but aren't 00:07:44.079 --> 00:07:47.720 actually related. I see. So in 1970, without 00:07:47.720 --> 00:07:50.180 doing the deep bone analysis, they saw a frog 00:07:50.180 --> 00:07:52.560 that looked like a backpack frog and just filed 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:55.220 it away. Right. But when the 2009 team looked 00:07:55.220 --> 00:07:57.779 at the vomerine teeth and the cranial crests, 00:07:57.779 --> 00:08:02.339 they realized this frog was an imposter. It didn't 00:08:02.339 --> 00:08:04.699 fit the Hemiphractidae blueprint at all. So they 00:08:04.699 --> 00:08:06.839 kicked it out of the club. Hand over your backpack, 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:09.180 you're out. Immediate eviction. They moved it 00:08:09.180 --> 00:08:11.500 to the family Hylidae. They actually suggested 00:08:11.500 --> 00:08:13.920 it might belong to a genus called Hylocertus, 00:08:13.980 --> 00:08:16.120 which are these really beautiful stream -breeding 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:19.060 crogs. But here is the catch. They weren't 100 00:08:19.060 --> 00:08:21.120 % sure. Why not? If they could see the bones, 00:08:21.220 --> 00:08:23.000 why couldn't they match it? Because it had a 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:25.879 mix of traits. It looked a bit like Hylocertus, 00:08:25.879 --> 00:08:29.240 but not enough to be absolutely certain. And 00:08:29.240 --> 00:08:32.259 in taxonomy, if you aren't certain, you don't 00:08:32.259 --> 00:08:34.620 commit. So let me just get this timeline straight. 00:08:34.779 --> 00:08:37.960 In 2009, they realize it's in the wrong family. 00:08:38.039 --> 00:08:40.559 They take away its backpack title. But because 00:08:40.559 --> 00:08:42.940 they aren't sure exactly which tree frog genus 00:08:42.940 --> 00:08:45.100 it belongs to, they just throw it back into the 00:08:45.100 --> 00:08:47.620 generic wastebasket of Hyla and slap quotation 00:08:47.620 --> 00:08:50.580 marks on it. That is exactly what happened. It's 00:08:50.580 --> 00:08:53.139 an orphan of classification. It was evicted from 00:08:53.139 --> 00:08:55.639 one home, but hasn't been given the keys to the 00:08:55.639 --> 00:08:58.500 new one yet. That's disturbingly bureaucratic. 00:08:58.519 --> 00:09:00.240 It's like finding out your dog isn't a golden 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:02.639 retriever, it's actually a wolf. But until we 00:09:02.639 --> 00:09:04.679 figure out what kind of wolf, we're just going 00:09:04.679 --> 00:09:06.820 to call it dog with air quotes and hope for the 00:09:06.820 --> 00:09:09.580 best. Essentially, yes. And this brings up a 00:09:09.580 --> 00:09:11.620 really important point about how science actually 00:09:11.620 --> 00:09:14.679 works. We often think of taxonomy as this dusty, 00:09:14.740 --> 00:09:17.700 static library where once a name is written down, 00:09:17.879 --> 00:09:20.360 it's etched in stone forever. Right, like it's 00:09:20.360 --> 00:09:22.519 a finished encyclopedia. But it's remarkably 00:09:22.519 --> 00:09:27.240 fluid. It changes as our tools, like better microscopes 00:09:27.240 --> 00:09:30.100 or DNA analysis, improve over time. But here's 00:09:30.100 --> 00:09:32.600 the thing that totally blows my mind about this 00:09:32.600 --> 00:09:37.159 reexamination in 2009. We are talking about looking 00:09:37.159 --> 00:09:40.519 at the specimen, looking at its bones. But what 00:09:40.519 --> 00:09:43.379 specimen are they actually looking at? This is 00:09:43.379 --> 00:09:45.659 the part that usually shocks people outside of 00:09:45.659 --> 00:09:49.139 biology. We are talking about the holotype. OK, 00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:50.940 define that for us, because it sounds like a 00:09:50.940 --> 00:09:53.690 sci -fi term, the holotype. A holotype is the 00:09:53.690 --> 00:09:56.690 single physical specimen that was used to originally 00:09:56.690 --> 00:10:00.149 describe and name a new species. It is the gold 00:10:00.149 --> 00:10:03.389 standard, the reference meter stick. Okay. If 00:10:03.389 --> 00:10:05.169 you want to know what a Tyrannosaurus rex is, 00:10:05.269 --> 00:10:08.269 you compare your bones to the type specimen. 00:10:08.509 --> 00:10:11.029 So there is one master frog somewhere. Exactly. 00:10:11.429 --> 00:10:14.850 For Hyland Neisfieri, the entire species profile. 00:10:15.440 --> 00:10:17.360 Everything we know, the name, the classification, 00:10:17.720 --> 00:10:19.919 the reclassification, the controversy is based 00:10:19.919 --> 00:10:22.039 entirely on the holotype. Which was collected 00:10:22.039 --> 00:10:25.159 when? In the 1940s. So just so I'm completely 00:10:25.159 --> 00:10:27.559 clear on this, we have one frog, one single frog 00:10:27.559 --> 00:10:30.759 in a jar of alcohol collected 80 years ago. And 00:10:30.759 --> 00:10:32.919 that is the only hard evidence we have that this 00:10:32.919 --> 00:10:35.559 species even exists. That's it. It's known only 00:10:35.559 --> 00:10:38.419 from that single solitary record. That is incredible. 00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:40.500 I mean, think about the detective work involved 00:10:40.500 --> 00:10:43.620 there. In 2009, those researchers didn't go out 00:10:43.620 --> 00:10:46.100 into the jungle and find a new population. They 00:10:46.100 --> 00:10:48.720 went to a museum shelf. Right. They pulled down 00:10:48.720 --> 00:10:50.299 a jar that had been sitting there for decades, 00:10:50.539 --> 00:10:52.840 looked at the same frog everyone else had looked 00:10:52.840 --> 00:10:55.549 at, and said, hey, everyone else is wrong. It 00:10:55.549 --> 00:10:57.850 really highlights the value of these museum collections. 00:10:57.990 --> 00:11:00.610 I think people generally see museums as just 00:11:00.610 --> 00:11:04.029 display cases for the public field trips and 00:11:04.029 --> 00:11:07.610 dusty dinosaur skeletons. But the back rooms 00:11:07.610 --> 00:11:10.629 are basically time machines. That jar is absolutely 00:11:10.629 --> 00:11:13.080 a time capsule. Because that frog was preserved, 00:11:13.379 --> 00:11:16.059 scientists decades later could ask new questions. 00:11:16.159 --> 00:11:18.799 It proves that science corrects itself even when 00:11:18.799 --> 00:11:20.960 absolutely no new data is collected from the 00:11:20.960 --> 00:11:23.159 wild. The data was just sitting there. Sitting 00:11:23.159 --> 00:11:25.159 on the shelf the whole time, just waiting for 00:11:25.159 --> 00:11:27.240 someone to look at it with fresh eyes. And maybe 00:11:27.240 --> 00:11:29.559 a better knowledge of vomerine teeth. But it 00:11:29.559 --> 00:11:31.980 does beg the obvious question. Why haven't we 00:11:31.980 --> 00:11:34.639 found anymore? I mean, 1940 was a very long time 00:11:34.639 --> 00:11:37.240 ago. We've had men on the moon since then. We've 00:11:37.240 --> 00:11:39.860 invented the Internet. We have mapped the entire 00:11:39.860 --> 00:11:43.080 globe with satellites. Why hasn't anyone found 00:11:43.080 --> 00:11:46.039 another hyla nice fori? Well, this takes us from 00:11:46.039 --> 00:11:50.179 the dusty shelves of a museum to the very real. 00:11:50.679 --> 00:11:53.179 Very complicated geography of the Columbian Andes. 00:11:53.259 --> 00:11:56.340 Where exactly was this one lonely frog actually 00:11:56.340 --> 00:11:58.980 found? The records place it in the border region 00:11:58.980 --> 00:12:01.320 between the departments of Boyaca and Casanare. 00:12:01.500 --> 00:12:03.620 This is the eastern slope of the Andes, dropping 00:12:03.620 --> 00:12:06.600 down toward the Orinoco Basin. Okay. It's a transition 00:12:06.600 --> 00:12:10.000 zone, incredibly biodiverse, lush, rugged terrain. 00:12:10.279 --> 00:12:12.100 So we know where it lived. Why can't we just 00:12:12.100 --> 00:12:13.799 go back and check under the exact same leaf? 00:12:14.200 --> 00:12:17.259 Two main reasons. The environment and the human 00:12:17.259 --> 00:12:19.009 element. Let's start with the environment. The 00:12:19.009 --> 00:12:21.990 specific type locality, the exact spot where 00:12:21.990 --> 00:12:24.210 the holotype was found, has suffered extensive 00:12:24.210 --> 00:12:26.769 habitat loss. So the forest might simply not 00:12:26.769 --> 00:12:29.590 be there anymore. Right. If you go to the exact 00:12:29.590 --> 00:12:32.570 coordinates today, you're likely to find agriculture, 00:12:33.009 --> 00:12:36.929 pasture land for cattle, or roads. The specific 00:12:36.929 --> 00:12:39.929 microhabitat where that one frog lived might 00:12:39.929 --> 00:12:42.909 be totally on. But forests are big. Surely it 00:12:42.909 --> 00:12:45.669 didn't live on just one single acre. If it was 00:12:45.669 --> 00:12:48.029 there, it must be in the surrounding hills, right? 00:12:48.570 --> 00:12:51.129 Theoretically, yes. The IUCN assessment notes 00:12:51.129 --> 00:12:54.210 that suitable habitat does remain nearby. It's 00:12:54.210 --> 00:12:56.570 not all scorched earth. There are still patches 00:12:56.570 --> 00:12:58.889 of cloud forest and foothill forest in that region. 00:12:59.389 --> 00:13:01.649 So there's hope. The frog could have just moved 00:13:01.649 --> 00:13:03.990 next door. So why aren't we looking there? That 00:13:03.990 --> 00:13:06.190 brings us to the second and honestly the more 00:13:06.190 --> 00:13:09.429 significant obstacle, security. Security. You 00:13:09.429 --> 00:13:12.190 mean like restricted areas? I mean geopolitical 00:13:12.190 --> 00:13:14.740 conflict. The region between Boyacá and Casanare 00:13:14.740 --> 00:13:17.500 has historically been a very difficult area regarding 00:13:17.500 --> 00:13:20.320 internal conflict in Colombia. Ah, I see. The 00:13:20.320 --> 00:13:23.440 IUCN report is very explicit about this. It states 00:13:23.440 --> 00:13:26.179 that no recent surveys have been conducted, specifically 00:13:26.179 --> 00:13:28.779 because of security problems. This isn't just 00:13:28.779 --> 00:13:31.100 about difficult terrain. It's about basic safety 00:13:31.100 --> 00:13:33.539 for the researchers. That's a sobering reality 00:13:33.539 --> 00:13:37.019 check. We often think of biology as this pure, 00:13:37.100 --> 00:13:39.759 unhindered exploration, like Darwin on the Beagle, 00:13:39.820 --> 00:13:42.620 just wandering around looking at finches. But 00:13:42.620 --> 00:13:44.860 you're saying that politics and war create actual 00:13:44.860 --> 00:13:47.080 blind spots in our scientific understanding. 00:13:47.460 --> 00:13:50.159 Completely. Field biology is a human endeavor. 00:13:50.669 --> 00:13:53.950 If a region is dangerous for humans, the biodiversity 00:13:53.950 --> 00:13:57.149 of that region becomes a black box. We simply 00:13:57.149 --> 00:14:00.330 cannot go there to look. There are vast swaths 00:14:00.330 --> 00:14:02.889 of the Amazon and the Andes that are scientifically 00:14:02.889 --> 00:14:05.549 dark because they are geopolitically hot. But 00:14:05.549 --> 00:14:08.210 wait, can't we use technology? Why do we need 00:14:08.210 --> 00:14:10.269 to physically send a person there? Can't we use 00:14:10.269 --> 00:14:13.429 drones or satellite imagery or those eDNA sensors 00:14:13.429 --> 00:14:15.429 to find these things without risking people? 00:14:15.750 --> 00:14:18.269 It's a great question, but for frogs, it's really 00:14:18.269 --> 00:14:21.429 tough. Satellites can show us forest cover, but 00:14:21.429 --> 00:14:23.490 they cannot show us a two -inch frog hiding under 00:14:23.490 --> 00:14:26.149 a bromeliad. That makes sense. And while environmental 00:14:26.149 --> 00:14:28.490 DNA sampling water to see what lives there is 00:14:28.490 --> 00:14:30.509 getting much better, you still need someone to 00:14:30.509 --> 00:14:32.470 physically go to the stream to collect the water. 00:14:32.629 --> 00:14:34.429 So there really is no substitute for boots on 00:14:34.429 --> 00:14:37.470 the ground. Not yet. To find a cryptic species 00:14:37.470 --> 00:14:40.769 that hasn't been seen in 80 years, you need a 00:14:40.769 --> 00:14:43.590 herpetologist with a headlamp literally crawling 00:14:43.590 --> 00:14:46.629 through the mud at night. And right now, that 00:14:46.629 --> 00:14:49.070 is just too risky in that specific valley. It 00:14:49.070 --> 00:14:51.629 creates this immense void on the map. The frog 00:14:51.629 --> 00:14:54.070 might be thriving. It might be everywhere in 00:14:54.070 --> 00:14:56.429 that specific valley singing every single night. 00:14:56.669 --> 00:14:59.409 But because it's unsafe for us, the frog remains 00:14:59.409 --> 00:15:02.090 a ghost. Exactly. But there was a glimmer of 00:15:02.090 --> 00:15:05.429 hope mentioned in the 2017 assessment. It noted 00:15:05.429 --> 00:15:07.950 that there were plans for a revisit. Oh, really? 00:15:08.169 --> 00:15:10.570 Yeah. This suggests that as the political situation 00:15:10.570 --> 00:15:13.389 in Colombia stabilizes and changes, the scientific 00:15:13.389 --> 00:15:15.889 community is ready to pounce. They haven't given 00:15:15.889 --> 00:15:17.389 up. They know the habitat's there. They know 00:15:17.389 --> 00:15:19.289 the frog should be there. They're just waiting 00:15:19.289 --> 00:15:21.730 for the window of opportunity to open. This leads 00:15:21.730 --> 00:15:24.230 us to the official status of the frog. If you 00:15:24.230 --> 00:15:26.690 look it up on the IUCN Red List, which acts as 00:15:26.690 --> 00:15:28.970 the global report card for extinction risk... 00:15:28.970 --> 00:15:31.409 What does it actually say? Is it extinct? Is 00:15:31.409 --> 00:15:34.350 it endangered? It is neither. Its status is data 00:15:34.350 --> 00:15:37.730 deficient. Data deficient. That sounds so bureaucratic. 00:15:37.730 --> 00:15:40.929 Like a clerical error again. It does. But it's 00:15:40.929 --> 00:15:43.940 a critically important distinction. Extinct means 00:15:43.940 --> 00:15:47.659 we are sure it's gone. Endangered means we have 00:15:47.659 --> 00:15:50.200 data showing the numbers are actively dropping. 00:15:50.500 --> 00:15:53.899 Data deficient means we simply do not know. It's 00:15:53.899 --> 00:15:56.899 a shrug, a giant scientific shrug. A very worried 00:15:56.899 --> 00:15:59.440 shrug. It's a question mark, not a period. The 00:15:59.440 --> 00:16:02.440 IUCN is saying we cannot assess the risk because 00:16:02.440 --> 00:16:05.639 we have absolutely no information. This frog 00:16:05.639 --> 00:16:08.539 exists in a state of quantum uncertainty. So 00:16:08.539 --> 00:16:11.279 it's basically Schrodinger's frog. Precisely. 00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:13.799 It could be extinct, wiped out by that habitat 00:16:13.799 --> 00:16:16.879 loss in the 50s and 60s, or it could be perfectly 00:16:16.879 --> 00:16:19.759 safe, hiding in the foliage in a zone where no 00:16:19.759 --> 00:16:21.820 biologist dares to tread. And the stakes are 00:16:21.820 --> 00:16:23.879 incredibly high with that label, right? Because 00:16:23.879 --> 00:16:26.059 data deficient feels like a trap. It is a trap. 00:16:26.320 --> 00:16:28.179 Conservation funding usually goes to the critically 00:16:28.179 --> 00:16:30.120 endangered. Yeah. If you can prove an animal 00:16:30.120 --> 00:16:32.340 is about to die out, you can get money to save 00:16:32.340 --> 00:16:35.179 it. You can launch a campaign. Save the panda. 00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:37.879 Save the rhino. But you can't launch a save the 00:16:37.879 --> 00:16:41.019 hyla, nice furry campaign if you can't even prove 00:16:41.019 --> 00:16:43.700 it's in danger or that it's even there. Exactly. 00:16:43.820 --> 00:16:45.600 Right. That's the tragedy of the data deficient 00:16:45.600 --> 00:16:47.960 label. Yeah. These species often just fall through 00:16:47.960 --> 00:16:50.679 the cracks. They're the silent extinctions. They 00:16:50.679 --> 00:16:53.120 might disappear before we ever even get the chance 00:16:53.120 --> 00:16:55.120 to give them a proper name without quotation 00:16:55.120 --> 00:16:58.179 marks. So what does this all mean for us? For 00:16:58.179 --> 00:16:59.919 the person listening right now who might just 00:16:59.919 --> 00:17:02.639 be curious about nature, we've got a frog found 00:17:02.639 --> 00:17:05.279 once in the 40s. It was mislabeled as a backpack 00:17:05.279 --> 00:17:08.099 frog. Then in the 2000s, scientists looked at 00:17:08.099 --> 00:17:10.079 the jar again and said, nope, not a backpack 00:17:10.079 --> 00:17:13.140 frog, and moved it to a temporary shelter called 00:17:13.140 --> 00:17:16.819 Hyla. And now it's hidden behind a veil of security 00:17:16.819 --> 00:17:19.039 issues in Colombia. I think the big takeaway 00:17:19.039 --> 00:17:21.559 here is that science is not a static encyclopedia 00:17:21.559 --> 00:17:24.000 of facts. We tend to teach science in schools 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:26.640 as a collection of known things. Photosynthesis 00:17:26.640 --> 00:17:29.180 works like this. Gravity works like that. Here 00:17:29.180 --> 00:17:30.819 are the species of the world. Right. We treat 00:17:30.819 --> 00:17:33.279 it like a finished book. Here is the answer key. 00:17:33.539 --> 00:17:36.160 But this story shows that science is a dynamic, 00:17:36.259 --> 00:17:39.740 messy process. It's full of revision, waiting, 00:17:39.980 --> 00:17:42.910 and correction. It reminds us that there are 00:17:42.910 --> 00:17:45.710 still massive blank spots on our map and in the 00:17:45.710 --> 00:17:48.670 library of life. We think we've categorized the 00:17:48.670 --> 00:17:51.890 world, but we have jars on shelves that are mislabeled. 00:17:52.009 --> 00:17:54.289 And forests we haven't stepped foot in for 80 00:17:54.289 --> 00:17:56.630 years. It's extremely humbling. It makes you 00:17:56.630 --> 00:17:58.630 realize how much we still have to learn about 00:17:58.630 --> 00:18:01.269 even the things we think we have on record. Absolutely. 00:18:01.589 --> 00:18:03.549 And if I can leave you with one specific thought 00:18:03.549 --> 00:18:05.289 that keeps me up at night regarding this frog. 00:18:05.490 --> 00:18:07.829 Oh, please do. I love the things that keep experts 00:18:07.829 --> 00:18:10.079 up at night. Think about the name again. It was 00:18:10.079 --> 00:18:13.039 originally called a backpack frog. We know backpack 00:18:13.039 --> 00:18:15.579 frogs carry eggs on their backs. That is their 00:18:15.579 --> 00:18:18.039 entire reproductive strategy, is how they survive. 00:18:18.359 --> 00:18:20.279 Right. That was the whole reason for the original 00:18:20.279 --> 00:18:22.500 name. It looked like it did that. But the 2009 00:18:22.500 --> 00:18:25.599 study proved it is not a backpack frog. It's 00:18:25.599 --> 00:18:30.079 a hylid. Most hylids, tree frogs, lay eggs in 00:18:30.079 --> 00:18:32.599 water. They find a pond, they lay eggs, they 00:18:32.599 --> 00:18:34.640 leave. Okay, so it probably just lays eggs in 00:18:34.640 --> 00:18:38.359 a pond. Maybe. But remember, the original scientists 00:18:38.359 --> 00:18:41.180 were smart people. They saw something in that 00:18:41.180 --> 00:18:44.019 frog's shape -wide hips, maybe, or a certain 00:18:44.019 --> 00:18:46.779 back structure that made them genuinely think 00:18:46.779 --> 00:18:50.559 backpack. What if it does do something weird? 00:18:50.839 --> 00:18:52.779 Oh, I see where you're going with this. We have 00:18:52.779 --> 00:18:56.359 never seen a living Hylinis fori. We have never 00:18:56.359 --> 00:18:58.940 seen its eggs. We have never seen its tadpoles. 00:18:59.119 --> 00:19:01.740 We have literally no biography for this animal. 00:19:01.900 --> 00:19:04.140 We have a name in quotes and a jar of alcohol, 00:19:04.339 --> 00:19:06.680 but we are completely missing the life history. 00:19:06.859 --> 00:19:09.460 Exactly. We have a creature that we named after 00:19:09.460 --> 00:19:11.799 a behavior, carrying a backpack of eggs, that 00:19:11.799 --> 00:19:14.740 it likely does not do. So the real question is, 00:19:14.779 --> 00:19:16.880 what does it do? Does it lay eggs in streams, 00:19:17.200 --> 00:19:19.539 in ponds? Does it have some other totally unique 00:19:19.539 --> 00:19:21.400 way of caring for its young that we've never 00:19:21.400 --> 00:19:23.579 seen, which tricked the original scientists into 00:19:23.579 --> 00:19:25.779 thinking it was a backpack frog? That is a haunting 00:19:25.779 --> 00:19:28.170 thought. Somewhere in a forest in Colombia, there 00:19:28.170 --> 00:19:30.289 might be a frog doing something completely unique 00:19:30.289 --> 00:19:32.450 with its eggs. Something that could rewrite the 00:19:32.450 --> 00:19:34.549 textbooks on tree frogs. And we have absolutely 00:19:34.549 --> 00:19:37.029 no idea. And until we can safely go back there, 00:19:37.150 --> 00:19:39.609 it remains a mystery inside quotation marks. 00:19:39.829 --> 00:19:42.369 Well, on that note, we are going to wrap up this 00:19:42.369 --> 00:19:44.839 deep dive. It's a great reminder that sometimes 00:19:44.839 --> 00:19:46.660 the most interesting things in the record books 00:19:46.660 --> 00:19:49.960 aren't the bold facts, but the punctuation marks 00:19:49.960 --> 00:19:52.200 that suggest we don't know the whole story. Always 00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:54.480 check the footnotes. Thank you for exploring 00:19:54.480 --> 00:19:57.440 the unknown with us today. And to you listening, 00:19:57.519 --> 00:20:00.240 next time you see a typo or a weird punctuation 00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:02.859 mark, don't just gloss over it. Dig a little 00:20:02.859 --> 00:20:05.259 deeper. You never know what kind of mystery might 00:20:05.259 --> 00:20:07.700 be hiding in the quotes. Catch you next time.