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Thread: A little look at Xenopus Longipes (Lake Oku Clawed Frog, a species exclusive to the lake and currently endangered)

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    Default A little look at Xenopus Longipes (Lake Oku Clawed Frog, a species exclusive to the lake and currently endangered)

    I was fortunate to be able to take a video of various Xenopus Longipes while I was at the London Zoo in Regent's Park. I was excited to go into the reptile house, but oh dear I was not prepared to be able to see the Lake Oku Clawed Frog.

    To my knowledge, the ZSL and another zoo are the only zoo's that are actively participating in their conservation. They were a joy to watch, and I took a video of them which you can see here:

    Xenopus Longipes at the Zoological Society of London - YouTube

    After I got home from the zoo, I started to do a little bit more research on them, and sadly there isn't that much documentation at all. Photos are also lacking, many of them do not show the marbley pattern on their belly. You can see this in the video.

    I was going to write a little report and write about the little details, how they swam and how they behaved in general after observing them for an hour, but I found a nice little paragraph that explains everything I wanted to say:


    Xenopus longipes, the only known species in the subgroup longipes, was first described by Loumont and Kobel in 1991. It is a polyploid species, one of only two known dodecaploid vertebrate species, 12n; the other known dodecaploid species is Xenopus ruwenzoriensis) with a chromosome number of 108 (Tinsley and Kobel 1996). It is relatively small compared to other Xenopus, with males being about 28-31 mm and females being about 32-36 mm in length. X. longipes are covered with tiny black spots both dorsally and ventrally. In addition to these small black spots, some specimens have larger, irregularly distributed spots dorsally. The dorsal side of the frog tends to be brown or caramel while the ventral side tends to be a bright orange (Loumont and Kobel 1991). X. longipes has large eyes with the lower eyelid covering about 1/3 of the eye length (Tinsley and Kobel 1996). Unlike many of the Xenopus species that have large webbed feet, X. longipes have small webbed feet with thin limbs and very long toes. X. longipes also differs in bone structure from other Xenopus in its laterally displaced parasagittal crests and unique nasal structure (Loumont and Kobel 1991).

    X. longipes is found only in Lake Oku in the Northwest Province of Cameroon. Lake Oku is situated in the volcanic highlands of Cameroon at 6°12ŽN, 10°28ŽE at an altitude of about 2219 m above sea level (Loumont and Kobel 1991). It is a fully aquatic frog. The lake itself is relatively shallow and is surrounded by montane rainforest.
    pecial Behaviors

    - Unlike most frogs of the genus
    Xenopus, X. longipes do not have large webbed feet and consequently are not very fast swimmers. The evolution of smaller feet in this species may be due to its location in an isolated lake with very little predation (Project Exploration 2006). (Credit to AmphibiaWeb)

    The main characteristics of Xenopus Longipes are in bold, these are the main issues I wanted to tackle myself and are observable in the video. I was mainly surprised about how small they were (I am used to having smaller frogs, since I own two Silurana Tropicalis which are inherently smaller than the common Xenopus Laevis and how slow and feeble they look when they swim. The majority of the frogs in the tank were females and quite plump (which was nice to see since most of the pictures on google only show very thin and wild ones) and the males were tiny tiny.

    I may edit this post in the future and make a more elaborate post, but until how I hope that this is enough. I wanted to share my experience with this apparently rare species, that some of us may never get to see with our own eyes.

    Necro
    βρεκεκεκὲξκοὰξκοάξ,
    βρεκεκεκὲξκοὰξκοάξ.
    λιμναῖακρηνῶντέκνα
    ξύναυλονὕμνωνβοὰν
    φθεγξώμεθ᾽, εὔγηρυνἐμὰνἀοιδάν,
    κοὰξκοάξ,
    ἣνἀμφὶΝυσήιον
    ΔιὸςΔιόνυσονἐν
    Λίμναισινἰαχήσαμεν,
    ἡνίχ᾽ὁκραιπαλόκωμος Aristophanes, Frogs: 209-220
    τοῖςἱεροῖσιΧύτροισι
    χωρεῖκατ᾽ἐμὸντέμενοςλαῶνὄχλος.
    βρεκεκεκὲξκοὰξκοάξ.

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