Diving >> High altitude diving >>Titicaca lake

Lake Titicaca	Diving trips	Photogallery	Titicaca sponges	Titicaca frogs

Background information about the lake and the frogs

High altitude lakes are habitats with extreme living conditions:

• low temperatures

• low air pressure

• intense evaporation

• strong temperature variations between day and night

• high radiation of ultraviolet and infrared light

The high radiation only allows a few species of amphibians to live in altitudes higher than 3,000 m. Worldwide there are only a few members of the frog family Lepodactylidae that live in high altitudes: Telmatobius and Pleurodema.

Their adaptation to the extreme living conditions resulted in morphologic changes:

• reduction of the lungs

  Kaira frog on the bottom of Lake Titicaca (© Stefan Austermühle / Mundo Azul)

• organic and structural modification of the skin

• changes in their reproduction cycle and larval development

In order to protect themselves, these frogs live under stones, in earth holes and under plants in wetlands, marshes, in rivers with pools and low flow of water as well as in the depth of the lakes, rarely coming up to the surface.

The frog populations live isolated from each other in small habitats that are frequently separated from each other by impassable zones. This causes the development of numerous biological and morphological variations. Therefore many local forms do exist that are hard to differentiate from each other, even for taxonomists.

Many aspects of the biology of these frogs being endemic to Lake Titicaca and being sacred to the local people, is still a mystery.

The local name for the frogs is "Kaira". According to their belief, the frogs are sacred and therefore do not form part of the regular food supply, like in many other areas of the Andes . They are never mistreated by the people. The frogs still play an important role in the religious practice of people around the lake.

When the weather stays dry, they abandon one or two frogs in small jars on top of a mountain. According to their belief, the frogs then will start "crying", calling for rain, which soon sets in. That makes the water in the jar flowing over and allows the frogs to return to the lake.
Sometimes frogs are used to cure diseases.

During the last years, people from other parts of Peru have started to buy frogs from fishermen and trade them to the coast, where they are killed by putting them alive in a mixer. The resulting fluid is sold as popular medicine.


Other important threats to their survival in Lake Titicaca are:

• Contamination

• Introduced predators

• Habitat destruction

• Climatic changes and higher levels of radiation

So far there does not exist any conservation effort or educational campaign in order to protect these rare animals. Due to their cultural importance, the frogs may serve as a flag species for aquatic conservation in Lake Titicaca.