No Tinder luck for soon-to-be-extinct Bolivian frog Romeo

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It's not easy being green: Finding love online is already hard enough for humans, but it turns out it's even harder for amphibians.

Romeo the water frog, a social media star desperately seeking to mate, has failed to find his Juliet and is now staring down extinction as stoically as an amphibian can.

The last known frog of his kind – a Sehuencas water frog, or Telmatobius yuracare – he has been fruitlessly calling for a mate from his tank at the Cochabamba Natural History Museum for years on end.

Unable to hook him up with a local, his minders in February launched a global call for help finding a Juliet for the little guy with a purposeful, gold-specked stare.

"Not to start this off super heavy or anything, but I'm literally the last of my species. I know – intense stuff. But that's why I'm on here – in hopes of finding my perfect match,” says Romeo’s profile on Match.com.

"I'm a pretty simple guy. I tend to keep to myself and have the best nights just chilling at home, maybe binge-watching the waters around me."

The profile also says he doesn't smoke, drinks "moderately," has never been married, does not have kids, but "definitely" wants them.

CGTN Screenshot

About 25,000 US dollars was raised to help with the campaign – but so far, months have come and gone without so much as a solid lead.

So his lonely croak goes unanswered.

The frogs live about 15 years and Romeo was found nine years ago. Nobody immediately suspected finding him a mate would be such an uphill battle.

"So now we are at the emergency point where we have to find more of his species, or it will go extinct," warned Teresa Camacho Badani at the Natural History Museum of Cochabamba.

The frog is found in two parts of Bolivia – Cochabamba and Santa Cruz.

"This is an endangered species, stays in water and most common in Bolivia. ...(known to live at) between 2,050 and 3,600 meters above sea level," Camacho told AFP.

Sampling scientists did back in 2006 and 2008 illustrated the species was faced with an alarmingly fast-paced path to extinction. It used to live in Ecuador, Camacho said, but is believed to have died out, its croak already silent in that fellow Andean nation.

(Top picture: A handout picture obtained from the Global Wildlife Conservation on February 9, 2018, shows a Sehuencas water frog (Telmatobius yuracare) named "Romeo" kept in a tank at the Natural History Museum in Cochabamba, Bolivia. /VCG Photo)

Source(s): AFP