At first the story of Romeo, the last Sehuencas water frog, seemed like an ecological tragedy. Here was an animal in an aquarium destined to live as a bachelor, passing with his kind into extinction.

But then there was Juliet.

After biologists found her leaping from a waterfall at the end of a Bolivian stream, they took her back to Romeo’s home at the Museo de Historia Natural Alcide d’Orbigny in Bolivia to see if they’d hit it off.

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These lovers’ stars do not appear to be crossed. Their first meeting was a success, and if their mating is productive, it could mean restored hope for their species, and for the conservation of other amphibians threatened by habitat destruction, exotic species, pollution, climate change and chytrid fungus (recently declared far worse than thought).