As human and industrial waste from nearby cities increasingly contaminate the famed lake that straddles the border between Bolivian and Peru, the native Aymara people who rely on it for food and income say action must be taken before their livelihoods, like the frogs, die off.

"We used to live off of fishing," said Juan Quispe, a local villager. "But now we have nothing to sustain us." The fish have moved farther and farther from shore.

On a recent Saturday, the 78-year-old Quispe joined a cleanup brigade to remove dead dogs, tires and other refuse from the shore of Cohana Bay where the lake meets the Katari River.

"I've never seen anything like this before," plumber Alisa Scott told ABC affiliate WPLG-TV. "This is the first time I pulled something like that out of a toilet."

Scott says she used her tools to reach far down into the toilet. What she began to pull out was still alive.

"To my surprise, I pulled out that large iguana," Scott said. "At first I thought it was a toy, and then it started moving around."

Iguanas are common in that part of Florida, but they aren't commonly found inside your plumbing.

This hybrid species, the Leaping Lesbian Lizards, also go by the name New Mexico Whiptail Lizard. In fact, the Whiptail is the state’s official reptile. It is one of a number of reptiles that is known to be parthenogenic. This means that this particular species of lizard uses asexual reproduction, so the development and growth of the reptiles embryos occurs without there being any fertilization.

The creation of the Leaping Lesbian Lizards takes place through the hybridization of the western whiptail and the little striped whiptail. Once the hybrid species is formed, they can actually reproduce through parthenogenic reproduction. If a male is born out of the hybridization process, they are actually sterile and seemingly do not live long, but through parthenogenesis the female population is able to reproduce.

Essentially the Leaping Lesbian Lizards, a hybrid species out of New Mexico, are actually a highly evolved reptile species capable of reproduction asexually, as well as through the hybridization process. These reproductive traits seem to be very prevalent across a number of different varieties of whiptail lizards.

Gray’s monitor lizards had long been considered extinct in the wild until some were discovered in 1975 on islands in the Philippines.

The species is considered one of the largest lizards in Asia, as the reptiles can grow to be 6 feet long and 20 pounds. The tree-dwelling, olive-green lizards usually dine on fruit and invertebrates.

The zoo’s reptile and amphibian curator, Ian Recchio, said his staff used their knowledge of other Asian monitor species and Komodo dragons to hatch the Gray’s monitor eggs.

According to official records by ZSI responsible for animal taxonomy under the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, 176 new species were discovered, described and reported from all over India last year.

Insects, which escape attention due to its size in areas with dense undergrowth, leads the pack among the animal kingdom as 93 new species of the invertebrates were found.

The list includes 23 species of fishes, 24 amphibian species like frogs, toads, etc, two species of reptiles, 12 species of arachnida (spiders) and 12 crustacean (crabs,lobsters, shrimps, etc).

Most of these discoveries have been made by ZSI scientists working across the country.

The chytrid fungus (Bd) has been linked to amphibian decline and even extinction in more than 200 species worldwide.

Now, a new report adds to growing evidence that the key to beat this fungus may lie on the skin of some of these amphibians.

In a new study, southern leopard frogs (Lithobates sphenocephala) treated with an antibiotic cocktail which eliminated their skin microbes were more likely to be affected by the chytrid fungus, whereas frogs that maintained their normal skin microbes fared better against the fungus.

When the expedition finally stumbled across the serpentine amphibian, it was at the end of a road and a seven-hour hike beyond that from the nearest village. The area is known as Cleopatra's Needle.

"This is an animal that doesn't have any flashy colors or anything like that, but it's one of those last, iconic species that we couldn't find," says Brown.

Remarkably, the expedition also found the Palawan toadlet (Pelophryne albotaeniata), which had been missing for the last 40 years.

The turtle frog is not something that, on sight, you would automatically call a frog. For one thing, if you see it, you’re probably in the middle of the Australian desert. The frog prefers living on and in sandy, loose soil. It’s also an unpleasant pink color which sometimes deepens to purple, so it generally looks like a lump of raw meat that someone stuck eyes on.

If you see it hatch its young, it still won’t seem froglike to you. This is one of the few frogs that’s never a tadpole. There being a dearth of pools in the desert, the turtle frog waits for heavy rains, comes out to mate, and then lays eggs that hatch small, but perfectly formed frogs. No little swimmers here.