Critically EndangeredTiticaca Water Frog
Telmatobius culeus
South America
Chile is a narrow strip more than four thousand kilometres long wedged between the Andes and the Pacific, and that shape turns it into a biogeographical island: the desert to the north, the cordillera to the east and the ocean to the west have isolated its flora and fauna, producing very high endemism. In the north, the Atacama is the driest desert on the planet, with areas where no rain has been recorded in decades. The centre has a Mediterranean climate and is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. To the south lies the Valdivian rainforest, a temperate wet woodland with thousand-year-old alerce trees, and beyond that the fjords, icefields and Patagonia. The Humboldt Current brings a cold and extraordinarily productive sea.
National animal: The huemul and the Andean condor, which together support the national coat of arms
Darwin's frog, discovered by Darwin himself during his journey through southern Chile, has a form of parental care shared with no other living vertebrate: the male swallows the eggs when they are about to hatch and houses them inside his vocal sac, where the tadpoles develop for weeks on their own yolk reserves. When they are ready, the father opens his mouth and fully formed miniature frogs hop out.
In 2018 Chile created the Route of Parks of Patagonia, a network of seventeen connected national parks stretching more than two thousand kilometres, after private land was donated to the state. The monito del monte, the sole survivor of an order of marsupials related to the Australian ones, is a living fossil of the Valdivian forest.
Torres del Paine between April and September for pumas. Chiloé and the Gulf of Corcovado between December and April for blue whales. Lauca and the northern salt flats for flamingos and vicuñas.
246 species found
Based on what we already know about Chile.
