With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, there is one creature that hopes he finds love as soon as possible. This creature is a Bolivian frog named Romeo. Romeo, who is also known as a Sehuencas water frog may very well be the last of his species, and if he fails to find a mate, that may be the end of the line for the Bolivian frog.
For the past 10 years, Romeo and his handlers have been desperate to find a suitable mate for the frog. He has been kept in captivity and taken care of in a tank at the Cochabamba Natural History Museum for years. The caretakers there have scoured the waterways of Bolivia in hopes of finding a female Sehuencas frog, even on in tadpole form.
“We don’t want him to lose hope,” said Arturo Munoz, a conservation scientist associated with the Global Wildlife Conservation. “We continue to remain hopeful that others are out there so we can establish a conservation breeding program to save this species.” Munoz has even created a profile of Romeo on a dating website to raise money for Romeo and his last chance at love. The funds will be used to find Bolivia for any sign of a female Sehuencas water frog.
If Romeo passes away without any children, he could take with him his entire subspecies. The same thing happened to Lonesome George, the last Galapagos tortoise who died in 2012. Romeo still has a few years in him to wait for a mate. Sehuencas water frogs live for around 15 years.