A critically endangered harlequin toad, known as the starry night toad, has been documented by biologists for the first time since 1991 in the mountains of Colombia. But unlike other such stories of “rediscovered” species, this one was never really lost – the local Arhuaco people knew exactly where the toad, which they call “gouna”, was all along.
“We have shared our home with the gouna for thousands of years,” says Ruperto Chaparro Villafaña, who represents the Arhuaco community of Sogrome near where the toad lives in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains. Read more in New Scientist.