It’s taken us almost nine months, but we finally got to redeem Christine’s Christmas present, and go behind the scenes at the Vivarium at the Manchester Museum to meet their collection of frogs and toads at the weekend just gone.
The Vivarium is actually a little unusual for a museum to have. Whilst the Manchester Museum is full of animals, these are mostly stuffed, whereas the Vivarium includes live animal specimens. There are a variety of amphibians and lizards on show, but frogs and toads make up the majority of the exhibits. Some are on show, but a number of species are kept behind the scenes, and this was what our tour allowed us to see.
There are a couple of notable species of frog that the Manchester Museum cares for.
The Variable Harlequin Toad
This species was, at one point, declared extinct as none had been seen in the wild for some time. Thankfully, a small colony was found in Panama, and six live specimens – three males and three females – were brought to the Manchester Museum. Thankfully, they’re now ‘merely’ critically endangered, and the Manchester Museum has been successful at breeding them. Indeed, it’s the only place in the world where you can see this particular species in captivity.
With the numbers remaining being so small, breeding is tightly monitored to encourage better genetic diversity, and so the males and females are kept separate. The tanks face each other, so the males could still see the females and were, to be frank, rather frisky when we visited. It was one of these toads that we sponsored when we bought the package.
Sylvia’s Leaf Frog
Most of the frog species at the Manchester Museum are leaf frogs, and one, the Sylvia’s Tree Frog, was ‘discovered’ here as recently as 2018. They were thought to be the closely related Splendid Tree Frog, which the Vivarium also holds, but had different markings and, following genetic testing, were found to be a different species. They’re kept in adjacent tanks, so you can see how to two species differ. ‘Sylvia’, incidentally, is the name of the granddaughter of the zoologist, Andrew Gray, who first described the species.
We also got to handle a couple of different species of frogs – namely the black-eyed leaf frogs and the red-eyed leaf frogs, pictured at the top. These species tend not to be on show as they’re largely nocturnal, so this presented a good opportunity to see them.
The Vivarium isn’t very big, and so the tour is only scheduled for an hour. As it was, we spent way longer than that chatting with our guide, so we definitely got our money’s worth. It was a great visit, especially for Christine and our ten-year-old who loved handling the frogs.
Closing for refurbishment
If you want to see the frogs for yourself, you’ll need to go to the Manchester Museum pretty soon, as the Vivarium will be closing next month for a refit. It’s due to re-open in the spring, but it does mean that the behind the scenes tours are not available to book at present. In the meantime, here’s a video (also embedded below) when Maddie Moate went on a similar tour around 10 years ago, with Andrew Gray (who would go on to describe Sylvia’s Tree Frog). As well as her YouTube channel, Maddie also presents science shows for young kids on CBeebies. It was this video that inspired me to book the visit in the first place.
