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#1 Animal Sanctuary in Costa Rica: From water to land – shedding their tails and learning to jump

Walking into Diamante’s Animal Sanctuary in Costa Rica is an amazing experience full of knowledge and interesting trivia’s. In fact, it might be be so exciting that you might not get all the information and fun facts. A very overlooked but interesting habitat is the ranarium. Here you can learn all about our different types of frogs and take a closer look to their life cycle. If you are squeamish and rather keep your distance, here is what you will find inside:

Gold-eyed tree frog at the Open Ranarium Habitat

CLOSED HABITATS & TADPOLES

Step into the ranarium and find several different species in enclosed habitats. These habitats have their temperature and humidity controlled for the species inside. You can find the blue jean frog, green and black poison dart frog, and the lovely poison dart frog. If you didn’t figure it out, all of these species are poisonous hence the closed habitats.

You can also find tadpole pools with their inhabitants at different points in their growth. There two species of frogs: red-eyed frogs and masked-tree frogs. As the tadpoles start developing, you can see their numbers decrease. This phenomenon is due to tadpoles being cannibalistic creatures making only 10% of the eggs laid achieve full grown status.

Tadpole at 6-8 weeks of development.

Tadpoles will get transfer into a close habitat with young frogs Once all four legs are develop . This habitat contains a water source for them to keep metamorphosing into land creatures. Jumping for them is a natural instinct; it is a skill not acquire through learning.

Once the frogs are full grown adults (it can take up to 16 weeks for this process) they are released into our open ranarium habitat.

OPEN HABITAT

Once you step into the open ranarium, you can find a humid, very green and frog-filled habitat. There are red-eyed frogs, masked-tree frogs, gold-eyed frogs and the common Mexican tree frog inside the habitat. Ask any of our guides, and they’ll be able to show you their hiding spots. The habitat is built to imitate their natural environment, and this makes for optimal breeding conditions. Eggs are being lay by the hundreds under big green leafs !

Red-eyed frogs lay their eggs under leafs that have a water source underneath. This way when the eggs are ready, they will fall into water and start their metamorphosis process. Frogs are born water creatures and need to evolve to land creatures. This means they undergo a process that changes all their internal organs to adapt to the different atmospheres.

Animal Sanctuary Passes

There are two passes that allow you to experience the amazing frogs:

• Discovery Pass ($38): Enter our Animal Sanctuary and meet our wildlife family: Lucy the sloth, Nico & Sama the jaguars, Balu the white faced monkey, King Julian our largest iguana and many more!
• Adventure Pass ($98): experience the full zip line tour plus one extra cable that runs through our animal sanctuary and a hanging bridge over the crocodiles! Finish the tour inside of our top of class animal sanctuary and enjoy our wildlife family. This pass also includes a buffet lunch at the Welcome Center and access to our beach activities (stand up paddle board, snorkeling, kayak and hanging out at the hammocks).

Diamante Eco Adventure Park is open from 8:30AM to 4:30PM – 365 days! For more information visit:

www.diamanteecoadventurepark.com

+ (506) 2105-5200

Pura vida!