Athlete's foot killing frogs and could cause extinction (Video)

Athlete's foot is killing frogs, and it could cause extinction, according to a Dec. 31 Daily News report. This fungus, called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or "Bd" for short, is threatening frogs from throughout the region, and it could end up wiping out many of them.

Athlete's foot is killing frogs in the western United States, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In Panama frogs are almost completely gone. The reason the fungus is killing the frogs is that it causes their pores to clog, and they die of heart attacks, which is terrible.

It is scary to go to places where the frogs have been hardest hit like Panama, and hear the silence. There are literally no frogs left to create the loud frog song that was there by the streams just a few years ago.

A Corroboree Frog walks across the gloved palm of reptile keeper Stuart Kozlowski at Taronga Zoo May 24, 2007 in Sydney, Australia. Around 130 of the critically endangered Corroboree frogs are being housed in a purpose built quarantine facility at the zoo

Photo credit: 

Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images

Tulane University professor Cori Richards-Zawacki said,

"This sure is depressing."

Absolutely. It is awful that no frogs are singing and that the decline happened so quickly.

For now, scientists are trying to get the remaining males and females of frog species to mate and reproduce, and it is slow going.

It is hard to believe that something like athlete's foot is killing frogs at such an alarming rate around the globe. Hopefully something can be done to save the frogs.