Frog whisperer: Australian scientist speaks to frogs

Reuters Videos
3 年前

Professor Michael Mahony speaks to frogs

Location: Cooranbong, Australia

He’s mastered imitating frog

shrills, croaks and whistles

Michael Mahony, Biology Professor:

"I always get a thrill when you (get a) call back and sometimes you forget to work because you know you'd just like to talk to the frogs for a while and it's sort of good fun."

30% of Australia's 240 species of frog are threatened

by climate change, water pollution,

and habitat loss

Location: University of Newcastle

Mahony has helped develop a method to preserve frog species

They have created the first

genome bank for Australian frogs

Michael Mahony, Biology Professor:

“At heart we are about saving animals in nature, but we also recognise when things become really bad, we have to take an insurance policy. And the insurance policy is to store their genome for the future.”

One of Mahoney’s former students

named a species after him

It’s called 'Mahony's Toadlet.'