Amphibia · Anura
Atelopus zetekiDunn, 1933
Panamanian Golden Frog
Identification not confirmed. One observer recorded this animal as this species and no one has since agreed, so the photograph may show a different animal.
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
A day-active toad reaching 63 mm snout to vent.
Amphibia › Anura › Bufonidae › Atelopus
- Grows to
- 63mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 10years
- Lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
Longer than 66% of all toads anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 13 to 250 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
19 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Conservation status
- Critically Endangered
- Population trend
- Decreasing
as reported by the IUCN Red List
The animal itself
- Longest recorded life
- 10years
Zigler, Straw, Tokuda, Bronson, and Riede, 2023, Plos One, 18:e0286582
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 63mm2.5 in
- Body mass · greatestmeasured
- 15g0.53 oz
snout-to-vent length, as this source reports for Anura
maximum adult body mass as recorded in the source
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Unknown
- Eats vertebrates
- Unknown
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
- Active in
- Wet and warm
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- How the young develop
- Through a larval stage
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 623eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Hatchling length
- 1.8mm
Naming and history
- Described by
- Dunn
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1933
Keeping one
Panamanian Golden Frog is assessed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
- Land
- 32 × 32cm
- Water, at least 3 cm deep
- 13 × 6cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 25 cm tall on average.
The standard gives 5 × 5 body lengths of land and 2 × 1 of water, for two animals.
For each further animal the standard asks for another 13 × 13 cm of land and 6 × 6 cm of water.
Swiss Tierschutzverordnung (TSchV), SR 455.1, Anhang 2, Tabelle 6 — legally binding minimum enclosure sizes for amphibians, given as multiples of total body length and stated for two animals.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length, which for a frog is its body length of 2.5 in (63 mm) — how this is worked out.
Panamanian Golden Frog
Feeding
2kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 15 g, the heaviest recorded for Panamanian Golden Frog — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Still living
- — Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Diet
- — How it hunts
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Average clutch
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Venomous
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Limbs
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Red List criteria
- — Region
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Suborder
- — Infraorder
- — Subspecies
- — Type locality
- — Habitat
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Bufonidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Atelopus zeteki. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/atelopus-zeteki
@misc{atelopus_zeteki_2026,
title = {Atelopus zeteki},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/atelopus-zeteki}
}Sources
- Oliveira, B.F. et al. (2017). AmphiBIO, a global database for amphibian ecological traits. Scientific Data 4:170123. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.