A “love potion” to save the endangered frogs

News 1 January, 2018
  • Brenda – stock.adobe.com

    QMI agency

    Monday, 1 January 2018 06:19

    UPDATE
    Monday, 1 January 2018 06:19

    Look at this article

    OTTAWA – A biologist from the University of Ottawa has developed a “love potion” to fight the decline of amphibian populations.

    “By using this mixture, they fool the animal, to induce them to reproduce”, he explained to CTV News the biologist Vance Trudeau, who developed this injection of hormones.

    This love potion is encouraging the females to lay eggs, and would encourage the males to have sexual activity.

    The mixture has already been used, with success, for the reproduction of twenty-two species of frogs, some of which will be released in the nature after their maturity.

    According to the biologist, more than a third of amphibian species around the world would be endangered, including in Canada.

    “This is huge, this is the greatest extinction of species since the dinosaurs”, he confided.

    The reasons for this decline would be related to climate change, habitat loss, diseases, pesticides, industrial products or water pollution that may affect the behaviour of mating frogs.

    This decline has an impact on humans: “the More you have of frogs, the less you have of insects, the less you have of human diseases”, he explains.