In Their Unnatural Environment

The first time that I saw a Wyoming toad, it made something of an impression on me.  Well, not the toad itself - if I walked outside and saw one on the ground next to my shoe, I'd probably just assume at a quick glance that it was a plain ol' American toad and carefully side-step it, or shoo it someplace safer.   What really made the impression was the exhibit.

There wasn't much of it.

The Toledo Zoo has an excellent reptile house, which I really enjoyed going through earlier that day, full of very impressive animals in handsomely replicated habitats.  Amphibians, normally housed with reptiles at other zoos, were in the Museum of Science, where many of them likewise occupied naturalistic displays.

In contrast, the Wyoming toads, along with the Kihansi spray toads (a Tanzanian species that is/was likewise extinct in the wild) were kept in an room that was primarily a window into the breeding facility.  Rows of tanks held toads in fairly simple, almost laboratory-like facilities.  Toads peered out at me from beneath flower pots and plastic huts.  My leopard gecko at home had a more furnished habitat.

This facility may have had a window, but it wasn't for show.  It was made for the serious work of breeding, raising, and monitoring endangered species..  Besides, you couldn't be said to "really" reproduce a Wyoming toad's natural environment.  There isn't one anymore.  There's the zoos, and that's it.

It's funny, but if I had seen those toads in pretty, natural displays, they probably wouldn't have stood out for me.  They would have been plain, brown toads in a building that already had a lot more interesting animals for me to look at, forgive my snobbery.  Seeing them in those relatively stark tanks made them stand out and got my intention, and when I left the zoo that night, that was one of the things I remembered the most.

What a world it would be if more animals didn't have a nature to be in - just some tanks on some shelves as a final safeguard against extinction.  It made quite the cautionary tale.