Reptiles & Amphibians of Costa Rica


	Introduction to Costa Rica

Fauna: Mammals Birds Reptiles Insects Fish

REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS
Destination content © Christopher P. Baker, used from Moon Handbooks Costa Rica, 5th edition.

Costa Rica is home to approximately 160 species of amphibians and more than 200 species of reptiles, half of them snakes.
Photo by Adrian Hepworth

Crocodiles and Caimans
Many travelers visit Costa Rica in the hope of seeing American crocodiles and caimans, the croc's diminutive cousins. In fact, both species are easily seen in the wet lowlands, especially in small creeks, playas, and brackish mangrove swamps, or basking on the banks of streams and ponds. They are superbly adapted for water. Their eyes and nostrils are atop their heads for easy breathing and vision (and smell) while otherwise entirely submerged, and their thick, muscular tails provide tremendous propulsion.
To this reptile, home is a "gator hole" or pond, a system of trails, and a cavelike den linked by a tunnel to the hole. As it moves between its nest and its pond and along its trails through the aquatic vegetation, it helps keep the water open and clear. Enriched by the crocs' droppings and by the remains of its meals, the waters around the holes supports a rich growth of algae and higher plants, which in turn support a profusion of animal life. The croc also helps maintain the health of aquatic water systems by weaning out weak and large predatory fish.
Mating season begins in December, when males are overcome with a desire to find a female. The polygamous males (males form harems) will defend their breeding turf from rival suitors with bare-toothed gusto. When estrous females approach, the ardent male gets very excited and goes through a nuptial dance, roaring intensely and even kicking up clouds of spray with his lashing tail. A curtsey by the damsel and the male clasps her ardently with his jaws, their tails intertwine, and the mating is over before you can wipe the steam from your camera.
A female crocodile selects a spot above the high-water mark and exposed to both sunlight and shade, then makes a large nest mound out of sticks, soft vegetation and mud, which she hollows to make room for her eggs (usually between 30 and 70). Eggs are laid March-May, during dry season. The creature is an exceptional guardian. She will guard the nest and keep it moist for several months after laying. The rotting vegetation creates heat, which incubates the eggs. When they are ready to hatch, the hatchlings pipe squeakily and she uncovers the eggs and takes the babies into a special pouch inside her mouth. She then swims away with the youngsters peering out between a palisade of teeth. The male assists, and soon the young crocs are feeding and playing in a special nursery, guarded by the two watchful parents (only 10 percent of newborn hatchlings survive; 90 percent survive in captive breeding programs). For all their beastly behavior, crocodiles are devoted parents.
Despite being relics from the age of the dinosaurs, croc brains are far more complex than those of other reptiles. They are sharp learners (in the Tempisque basin, crocs have been seen whacking tree trunks with their tails to dislodge chicks from their nests). They also have an amazing immunology system that can even defeat gangrene.
American crocodiles (not to be confused with the American alligator that inhabits the Florida Everglades) were heavily hunted for their skins until their numbers were so reduced that by the 1960s they were almost extinct. As biologist David Janzen says: "We may never again see the huge four-meter animals that used to terrify the campesinos and eat their dogs." Fortunately, since the 1970s, the American crocodile (called the cocodrilo locally) has been protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and is making a strong comeback, repopulating many rivers from which it has been absent for years. It can easily be seen in dozens of rivers throughout the lowlands and estuaries along the Pacific coastline. Sections of the Tárcoles River have as many as 240 crocodiles per mile, far higher than anywhere else in Costa Rica.
The creatures, which can live 80 years or more and reach 15 feet (4.5 meters) in length, spend much of their days basking on mudbanks, maintaining an even body temperature, which they regulate by opening their gaping mouths. At night, they sink down into the warm waters of the river for the hunt. The American crocodile--one of four species of New World crocodiles--is generally a fish-eater, but older adults are known to vary their diet with meat... so watch out! Although they are commonly thought to be sluggish, crocodiles, preferring stealth, can run very fast in short bursts. Crocs cannot chew. They simply snap, tear, and swallow. Powerful stomach acids dissolve everything, including bones. A horrible way to go!
One of the smallest of western crocodilians--no more than six feet (two meters) long--and possibly the most abundant in existence today, the speckled caiman (guajipal locally) is still relatively common in parts of wet lowland Costa Rica on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Palo Verde and Tortuguero are both good places to spot them in small creeks, playas, and brackish mangrove swamps, or basking on the banks of streams and ponds.
The scales of the caiman take on the blue-green color of the water it slithers through. Such camouflage and even the ability to breathe underwater, through raised nostrils, have not protected the caiman. Their nests are heavily disturbed by dogs, foxes, tegu lizards, and humans. And increasingly they are sought for their skins, which are tragically turned into trivia. Ironically, this is easing the pressure on the crocodiles, which are fast disappearing as humanity takes their hides and habitats.
Caiman or croc? It's easy to tell. The former is dark brown with darker bands around its tail, and holds its head high when sunning. The crocodile is an olive color with black spots on its tail, and is much larger.
Iguanas and Lizards
The most common reptile you'll see is the dragonlike, tree-dwelling iguana, which seems to have little fear of man and can grow to a meter in length. You'll spot them in all kinds of forest habitats, crawling through the forest leaf litter or basking for long hours on branches that hang over water, its preferred route of escape when threatened. They are most common in drier areas below 2,500 feet elevation.

There's no mistaking this reptilian nightmare for any other lizard. Its head--the size of a man's fist--is crested with a frightening wig of leathery spines, its heavy body encased in a scaly hide, deeply wrinkled around the sockets of its muscular legs. Despite its menacing One Million Years b.c. appearance, it is quite harmless, a nonbelligerent vegetarian with a fondness for leaves and fruit.
There are two species in Costa Rica: the green and the spiny-tailed iguana. The green iguana (Iguana iguana), which is a dull to bright green, with a black-banded tail, can grow to two meters long. The males turn a bright orange when they get ready to mate in November/December and choose a lofty perch from which to advertise their showy dewlap, sexual flush, and erect crest of spines (they revert to darker green by night). The horny male will forego food for six weeks to win over the love of his life. Females nest in holes in the ground, then abandon their eggs (fewer than 5 percent of hatchlings will survive to adulthood).
The smaller, gray or tan-colored spiny iguana, also called the ctenosaur (Iguana negra)--known locally as the garrobo--has a tail banded with rings of hard spines that it uses to guard against predators by blocking the entrance to holes in trees or the ground.
Campesinos and local gourmands, for reasons you may not wish to know, call the green iguana the "tree chicken." (The iguana population of neighboring countries has been decimated for meat, spurring a cross-border commerce of iguanas; fortunately, Costa Ricans are not avid consumers of iguana meat.) The ctenosaur is considered even more edible, and you may see them on sale in mercados of major cities. The KekoLdi Indian Reserve and Iguana Park, near Orotina, both have projects to raise iguanas for meat.
Iguanas are territorial and defend their turf aggressively against competitors. The first warning sign is a head bobbing. Often the defending iguana will become lighter in color, like a chameleon.
Another miniature dinosaur is Basilicus basilicus, or Jesus Christ lizard, a Pacific lowland dweller common in Santa Rosa, Palo Verde, and Corcovado National Parks. These, too, have large crests atop their heads, backs, and tails, and use water as their means of escape, running across it on hind legs (hence, their name).
Snakes
Although rarely seen by the casual tourist in Costa Rica, the 138 species of snakes make up more than half of all reptile species in the nation. Wherever you are in the country, snakes are sure to be about. They are reclusive, however, and it is a fortunate traveler indeed who gets to see in the wild the fantastically elongated chunk-headed snake, with its catlike elliptical eyes, or the slender, beak-nosed, bright green vine snake.
Among the more common snake species you are likely to see are the wide-ranging and relatively benign boas, which, with luck, you might spot crawling across a cultivated field or waiting patiently in the bough of a tree in wet or dry tropical forest, savanna, or dry thorn scrub. Boas are aggressive when confronted: though not poisonous, they are quite capable of inflicting serious damage with their large teeth and will not hesitate to bite. Heaven forbid a full-grown adult (three meters or more) should sink its teeth in sufficiently to get its constricting coils around you!
Here are two fascinating tidbits to sink your teeth into. The coffee palm viper is a heat-seeking missile that can detect differences of 1/3,000° C per meter! And Clelia clelia eats only other snakes and likes its salsa muy caliente--it prefers the fearsome fer-de-lance.
Only 18 species of snakes in Costa Rica are venomous (nine are very venomous), including a species of tropical rattlesnake found in Guanacaste and a few relic areas of the Meseta Central. It produces a venom considerably more toxic than its North American cousin--blindness and suffocation are typical effects on humans--and it rarely uses its well-developed rattle to warn off the unwary. All Costa Rica's venomous snakes produce the same venom except the coral snake. Hence there are only two anti-venoms: one for the coral snake and a second for all others.
The most talked-about snake in Central America is the fer-de-lance, much feared for its aggressiveness--it accounts for 80 percent of all snake bites in Costa Rica--and lethal venom. One of several Central American pit vipers--another is the bushmaster--the fer-de-lance can grow to a length of three meters and is abundant throughout the country, particularly in overgrown fields and river courses in drier lowland regions. Costa Ricans call this lethal creature terciopelo, Spanish for "velvet." As juveniles, fer-de-lance are arboreal critters that feed on lizards and frogs, which they attract with a yellow-tipped tail. As adults, they come down to earth, where they move about at night and, by daylight, rest in loose coils of burnished brown on the forest floor.
Give the fer-de-lance a wide berth! Unlike other vipers, which usually slither away at the approach of humans and will not strike unless provoked, the fer-de-lance stands its ground and will bite with little provocation. The snake's powerful venom dissolves nerve tissue and destroys blood cells and artery walls; those fortunate enough to survive may suffer paralysis or tissue damage so massive as to require amputation of the bitten limb. The fer-de-lance frequently disgorges venom, which is said to smell like dog scat--a good warning sign to be aware of when hiking.
Among the more colorful snakes are the four species of coral snakes, with small heads, blunt tails, and bright bands of red, black, and yellow or white. These highly venomous snakes (often fatal to humans) exhibit a spectacular defensive display: they flatten their bodies and snap back and forth while swinging their heads side to side and coiling and waving their tails.
Along the Pacific beaches, you may sometimes encounter venomous pelagic sea snakes, yellow-bellied and black-backed serpents closely related to terrestrial cobras and coral snakes. This gregarious snake has developed an oarlike tail to paddle its way through the ocean. It tends to drift passively with its buddies among drift-lines of flotsam, where it feeds on small fish.
The Serpentario in San José, Parque Viborona near Pochotel, and El Mundo de los Serpientes (World of Snakes) near Grecia, are good places to learn to identify snakes and their habits and habitats. There is also a snake laboratory at the Clodomiro Picando Institute in Coronado, where you can watch snakes being milked for venom.
Photo by Adrian Hepworth

Turtles
Six of the world's eight species of marine turtles nest on Costa Rica's beaches, and you can see turtles laying eggs somewhere in Costa Rica virtually anytime of year.
Tortuguero National Park, in northeastern Costa Rica, is one of fewer than 30 places in the world that the green turtle considers clean enough and safe enough to lay its eggs. Although green turtles were once abundant throughout the Caribbean, today there are only three major sites in the region where they nest: one on Aves Island, 62 km west of Montserrat, a second at Gandoca-Manzanillo (and occasionally on beaches north toward Cahuita), and another at Tortuguero, the only major nesting site in the western Caribbean. June through November, peaking August-September, more than 5,000 greens swim from their feeding grounds as far away as the Gulf of Mexico and Venezuela to lay their eggs at the eons-old nesting site on the oceanside 21-km stretch of beach on Tortuguero's barrier island.
On the Pacific coast, the most spectacular nestings are at Playa Nancite, in Santa Rosa National Park, and Ostional Wildlife Refuge, where tens of thousands of olive ridley turtles come ashore July-December in synchronized mass nestings known as arribadas (see special topic, Respite for the Ridley, in the Nicoya Peninsula chapter). Giant leatherback turtles, which can weigh as much as a ton and reach a length of three meters, nest at Playa Grande, near Tamarindo, October-April (see special topic, The Leatherback Turtle, in the Nicoya Peninsula chapter). Hawksbills, ridleys, leatherbacks, Pacific greens, and occasionally loggerheads (primarily Caribbean nesters) appear in lesser numbers at other beaches along the Pacific coast.
Terrestrial turtles are also common in Costa Rica, particularly in the Caribbean lowlands, where you can see them going about their business in the midmorning hours and after heavy rains. One species--the red turtle, found in northern Pacific lowlands--is particularly easy to spot: its high-domed carapace is gaudily patterned in oranges, reds, yellows, and blacks. Several species of aquatic turtles also frequent the swamps and creeks. Look for them squatting on partially submerged logs.
Turtle Turmoils:
One hundred years ago, green turtles were as numerous as the bison on the North American plains. They were highly prized for their meat by Central American and Carib Indians, who netted and harpooned them. And British and Spanish fleets, buccaneers, and merchantmen counted on turtle meat to feed their crews while cruising in New World waters. An average adult green turtle weighs 115 kg. They're easy to catch and easy to keep alive for weeks on their backs in a space no bigger than the turtle itself. ("Turtle turners" patrolled nesting beaches, where they wrestled female turtles onto their backs to be picked up the next day.)
The end of colonialism offered no respite. Large-scale green turtle export from Tortuguero, for example, began in 1912 when turtle soup became a delicacy in Europe. And the recurrent massing of olive ridley turtles at a few accessible beaches fostered intensive human exploitation. Despite legislation outlawing the taking of turtle eggs or disturbing nesting turtles, nest sites continue to be raided by humans (encouraged by an ancient Mayan legend that says the eggs are aphrodisiacs).
When not nesting in Costa Rica, Pacific ridleys congregate in Mexican and Ecuadorian waters, where commercial exploitation continues in earnest. Turtle oil is used in the manufacture of cosmetics and perfumes, the shells used in jewelry and ornaments, and the offal dried and processed as fertilizer. Hawksbills, which rarely exceed 55 kg, are hunted illegally for the tourist trade: one occasionally still sees stuffed turtle specimens for sale. Only 13 nestings of hawksbills were recorded in 1999 at Tortuguero, a dramatic shortfall for this critically endangered species.
Mother Nature, too, poses her own challenges. Coatis, dogs, raccoons, and peccaries dig up nest sites to get at the tasty eggs. Gulls, vultures, and hungry frigate birds, with their piercing eyes and sharp beaks, pace the beach hungrily awaiting the hatchlings; crabs lie in wait for the tardy; and hungry jacks, barracudas, and sharks come close to shore for the feast. Ridley hatchlings have even been found in the stomachs of leatherback turtles. Of the hundreds of eggs laid by a female in one season, only a handful will survive to reach maturity. (As many as 70 percent of the hatchlings are eaten before they reach the water.)
Most of the important nesting sites in Costa Rica are now protected, and access to some is restricted. Still, there is a shortage of undisturbed beaches where turtles can safely nest. Most turtle populations continue to decline because of illegal harvesting and environmental pressures, despite the best efforts of conservationists inspired by Dr. Archie Carr of the University of Florida, who has written and lectured indefatigably on behalf of turtle protection (see Tortuguero National Park in the Caribbean Coast chapter).
Turtle Ecology: Turtles have hit on a formula for outwitting their predators, or at least for surviving despite them. Each female turtle normally comes ashore 2-6 times each season and lays an average of 100 eggs on each occasion. Some marvelous internal clock arranges for most eggs to hatch at night when hatchlings can make their frantic rush for the sea concealed by darkness. Often, baby turtles will emerge from the eggs during the day and wait beneath the surface of the beach until nightfall. The young hatch together and dig their way up and out through up to a meter of sand as a kind of "simple-minded, cooperative brotherhood," says Archie Carr, "working mindlessly together to lower the penalties of being succulent on a hostile shore." They are programmed to travel fast across the beach to escape the hungry mouths. Even after reaching the sea they continue to swim frantically for several days--flippers paddling furiously--like clockwork toys.
No one knows where baby turtles go. They swim off and generally are not seen again until they appear years later as adults. Turtles are very slow growing; most immature turtles of all species increase in carapace length by less than three cm a year. In fact, little is known about the lives of adult marine turtles. In captivity, a turtle can grow to the size of the smallest fertile nester in about 10 years; in the wild, they grow much slower.
Turtles are great travelers capable of amazing feats of navigation. Greens, for example, navigate across up to 1,500 miles of open sea to return, like salmon, to the same nest site. Guided presumably by stars and currents and their own internal compass, thousands of greens arrive at Tortuguero every year from their faraway feeding grounds. (Most Tortuguero greens apparently arrive from the Miskito Bank feeding area of Nicaragua.)
One of the few things known about the intervals between females' trips to the nesting beaches is that a lot of strenuous romance goes on out in the surf. There is no pair-bonding between individual turtles, and each female may be mated by as many as 10 males.
"Sea turtles in love are appallingly industrious," according to Archie Carr. "The male turtle holds himself in the mating position on top of the smooth, curved, wet shell of the wave-tossed female by employing a three-point grappling rig [consisting] of his long, thick, curved, horn-tipped tail and a heavy, hooked claw on each front flipper... The female generally stays coy and resistant for what seems an unnecessarily long while. Other males gather, and all strive together over the female in a vast frothy melee." In the frenzy of mating, intelligence seems sadly lacking. Females have been mounted by a male who in turn is mounted by another male while several more jealous males jostle and bite one another to dislodge the successful Casanova.
Most females make their clumsy climb up the beach and lay their eggs under the cover and cool of darkness (loggerheads and ridleys often nest in the daytime, as they seem less timid). They normally time their arrival to coincide with high tide, when they can swim in over the coral reef and when they do not have to drag themselves puffing and panting across a wide expanse of beach. Their great weight, unsupported by water, makes breathing difficult. As a turtle drags her ponderous bulk up the beach, her progress is slow and punctuated by numerous halts to breathe. Some turtles even die of heart attacks brought on by the exertions of digging and laying.
Once she settles on a comfortable spot above the high tide mark, the female scoops out a large body pit with her front flippers. Then her amazingly dexterous hind flippers go to work hollowing out a small egg chamber below her tail and into which white, spongy, golf-ball-size spheres fall every few seconds. After shoveling the sand back into place and flinging sand wildly about to hide her precious treasure, she makes her way back to sea.
The eggs normally take 6-8 weeks to hatch, incubated by the warm sand. The sex of the hatchling is determined by the temperature of the sand: males are predominantly produced in cooler sand; a difference of 2-3 degrees Celsius will produce females. Thus, hatchlings from any one nest site are usually siblings of the same gender.

Where the Turtles Nest
Turtles come ashore at beaches throughout Costa Rica. Here are some of the most important nesting sites.
Caribbean
Tortuguero:Loggerheads and hawksbills come ashore year-round but especially in August. The major attractions are green turtles, which nest here June to November in vast numbers.
Barra de Matina Beach: Leatherbacks, greens, and hawksbills come ashore at this private sanctuary north of Puerto Limón.
Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge: Four species of turtles lay their eggs on this beautiful beach south of Punta Uva. April and May are the best months to spot leatherbacks. By July, they are gone, replaced by greens, which can be seen in large numbers through September. Hawksbills also come ashore year-round, mostly March to August.
Pacific
Curú Wildlife Refuge: Three species of turtles come ashore at this private refuge, on the eastern coast of the Nicoya Peninsula.
Las Baulas Marine National Park: Playa Grande is Costa Rica's preeminent nesting site for leatherback turtles. It has evolved into perhaps the nation's best-managed site. Leatherbacks come ashore October to April; up to 100 on any one night. Olive ridley and green turtles can be seen here in small numbers May to August. There's a splendid turtle museum.
Ostional National Wildlife Refuge: This 248-hectare refuge, north of Playa Nosara, protects the major nesting site of olive ridleys (locally called lora). It is one of two sites in Costa Rica where synchronized mass nestings (arribadas) of the olive ridley occur, at two- to four-week intervals (generally between the third quarter and full moon) April to December, with a peak in July through September. During each arribada (which may last four to eight days), up to 120,000 turtles may nest at Ostional. Solitary nesters can be seen on most nights. Leatherbacks and Pacific greens also nest here.
Playa Nancite: Located in Santa Rosa National Park, Nancite--which is off-limits to anyone but scientists--is the second major site for arribadas. Some 200,000 ridleys choose Nancite. Leatherbacks and Pacific greens also nest here. Peak arrival for ridleys (called carpentaria locally) is midsummer, with a peak in October.

Note: When near nesting sites, respect the turtles' need for peace and quiet. Nesting turtles are very timid and extremely sensitive to flashlights, sudden movements, and noise, which will send a female turtle in hasty retreat to the sea without laying her eggs. Sometimes she will drop her eggs on the sand in desperation, without digging a proper nest.
Photo by Adrian Hepworth

Frogs and Toads
The amphibians are primarily represented by the dozens of species of frogs and toads, most of which you're probably more likely to hear than to see. That catlike meow? That's Boulenger's hyla, one of Costa Rica's more than 20 kinds of toxic frogs. That sharp tink, tink that is usually the most prominent sound on damp nights in Costa Rica's mid-elevation rainforests? That's the tiny tink frog, of course. That insectlike buzz is probably two bright-red poison-arrow frogs wrestling belly-to-belly for the sake of a few square meters of turf. And the deafening choruses of long loud whoops that resound through the night in Nicoya and the adjacent lowlands of Guanacaste? That's an orgiastic band of ugly, orange and purple-black Mexican burrowing toads doing their thing. Should you locate them--the sound carries for miles--don't be surprised to find the horny toads floating like balloons with legs outstretched, emitting their lusty whoops. Love's a strange thing!
Of all Central America's exotic species, none are more colorful--literally and figuratively--than the poison-arrow frogs, from which indigenous people extract deadly poisons to tip their arrows. Frogs are tasty little fellows to carnivorous amphibians, reptiles, and birds. Hence, in many species, the mucous glands common in all amphibians have evolved to produce a bitter-tasting poison.
In Central and South America at least 20 kinds of frogs have developed this defense still further: their alkaloid poisons are so toxic that they can paralyze a large bird or small monkey immediately. Several species--the dendrobatids, or poison-arrow frogs, which are confined to Costa Rica--produce among the most potent toxins known: atelopidtoxin, bufogenin, bufotenidine, and bufotoxin. Pity the poor snake that gobbles up Dendrobatis granuliferus, a tiny, bright green, red, and black frog that inhabits the lowland forests of the Golfo Dulce region (it is commonly seen on forest floors of Corcovado National Park). Another species, Bufo marinus, can even squirt its poison in a fine spray. And some species' eggs and tadpoles even produce toxins, making them unpalatable, like bad caviar!
Of course, it's no value to an individual frog if its attacker dies after devouring the victim. Hence, many have developed conspicuous, striking colors--bright yellow, scarlet, purple, and blue, the colors of poison recognized throughout the animal world--and sometimes "flash colors" (concealed when at rest but flashed at appropriate times to startle predators) that announce, "Beware!" These confident critters don't act like other frogs either. They're active by day not night, moving boldly around the forest floor, "confident and secure," says one writer, "in their brilliant livery."
Perhaps the most famous poison frog species is the golden toad, found only in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve. In fact, the montane rainforest reserve owes its existence in part to the discovery of Bufo periglenes. This brilliant, neon orange arboreal toad--discovered in 1964 and so stunning that one biologist harbored "a suspicion that someone had dipped the examples in enamel paint"--may now exist only on the cover of tourist brochures. The males are the orange ones; females, which are larger, are yellow and black with patches of scarlet.
Adaptive Breeding: April through May, toads go looking for love in the rain pools of scarlet bromeliads that festoon the high branches. Here, high in the trees, tadpoles of arboreal frogs wriggle about. Few Costa Rican frog species breed in permanent bodies of water, where fish predation is intense. Above 1,500 meters, where there are no native fish species, stream breeding is more common, although the introduction in recent years of trout into upland streams already threatens whole frog populations.
The frogs instead have evolved away from dependence on bodies of permanent water. Many species, particularly the 39 species of hylids, spend their entire lives in the tree canopies where they breed in holes and bromeliads. (The hylids have enlarged suction-cup pads on their toes. They often catch their prey in midair leaps: the suction discs guarantee surefooted landings.) Others deposit their eggs on vegetation over streams; the tadpoles fall when hatched. Others construct frothy foam nests, which they float on pools, dutifully guarded by the watchful male.
Some rainforest species, such as the diminutive and warty eleutherodactylus--its name is longer than its body--live on the ground, where they lay their eggs in moist cups of leaves. The tadpole develops fully within the egg sac before emerging as a perfect, if tiny, replica of its parents: it and 12 of its siblings could easily fit on a man's fingernail. Some tadpole species--the Hyla zeteki, for example--are cannibalistic: they eat other frogs' tadpoles. The carnivorous smoky frog (Leptodactylus pentadactylus), an aggressive giant (adults can grow up to 20 cm long), can eat snakes up to 50 cm long. It, too, can emit a poisonous toxin, to which some snakes are immune. If the smoky frog's loud hissing, inflated body, and poisonous secretions don't manage to scare off its predator, it has another ingenious defense: when captured it emits a loud scream.

Fauna: Mammals Birds Reptiles Insects Fish

This is an small excerpt from Moon Handbooks Costa Rica. CentralAmerica.Com highly recommends that you enhance your vacation by taking a copy of Moon's comprehensive Handbook with you. For more information visit the Moon Handbooks page on this site.