Amphibians occupy a complex place in cultures around the world. Throughout history, these vibrant, shape-shifting creatures of land and water have been met with both wonder and hostility.
In the second part of this new series Amphibians and Culture, Amphibian Programme officer Pria Ghosh discusses the cultural role of amphibians in Central and South America. Here, many Indigenous communities nurture these species and their ecosystems, within relationships built on respect and reciprocity.
In the highlands of Central and South America, many communities view amphibians as harbingers of the harvest and times of plenty. In Colombia’s Sierra Nevada mountains, our partner Fundación Atelopus is working with the Indigenous Arhuacos community to save the starry-night harlequin toad, or ‘Gouna’ in the Arhuacos language.
Scientists had considered the starry-night harlequin extinct for nearly 40 years. Then, in 2016, the Arhuacos revealed that the toads were alive and thriving in their territory. The community, who had always lived in harmony with the species, and who consider it sacred, had spent the past decades protecting it and its habitat from harm.
The starry-night harlequin toad gets its name for its bright white spots, spangled on coal black skin. For nearly forty years, scientists believed it was extinct. Image: © Jaime Culebras.
How Indigenous knowledge saved the starry-night harlequin
The rhythm of the toads’ lives set the beat of the Arhuacos calendar and indicates traditional agricultural cues. When they emerge with the rains, it’s time to plant, and when they disappear it’s time to harvest.
Kaneymaku Suárex Chaparro, a member of the Arhuacos Sogrome community and a biology student at the Francisco José de Caldas District University, explains “The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta [the toad’s home mountain range] is a place that we consider sacred, and harlequin frogs are the guardians of water and symbols of fertility… The community manages its resources to the extent that they preserve their home, as dictated by their law of origin, which means that they live in balance with Mother Earth.”
Members of the Arhuaco people and Fundacion Ateloupos are working together to continue protecting the starry-night harlequin. Image: © Fundación Atelopus.
Today, the Arhuacos are collaborating with Synchronicity Earth partner Fundación Atelopus combining scientific and Indigenous knowledge to monitor the population of the starry night harlequin, while keeping the sacred toad’s exact location a secret . (Secrecy maintains community sovereignty while preventing the toad from becoming a tourist attraction or target for the pet trade). Through this research, they hope to learn which elements of the Arhuacos approach have saved the toads from extinction, enabling them to protect the species in perpetuity, together.
Amphibians and culture in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes
In the Quechua and Aymara cultures of the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes, ‘Pachamama,’ or Mother Earth, is the highest deity. In Bolivia, Pachamama is represented by the ‘jamp’atu’ (toad). Similar to the role of toads in Arhuaco culture, this spiritual association is closely tied to agriculture and the patterns of the seasons. In the Andes, farmers say that the spirit of Pachamama is in the jamp’atus that appear at the start of the rains, where they care for the fields and bring good luck.
Two of our Andean partners—Bolivian Amphibian Initiative (BAI) and