At a park near Canberra, Australia, a series of small white pyramid-shaped boxes are part of a new experiment: Can “frog saunas” help bring back an endangered species?

The green and golden bell frog—an iconic Australian amphibian with a call that sounds like a cross between a power tool and a quacking duck—is already extinct in the area. Like other frog species around the world, it was a victim of a deadly fungus called chytrid that has been killing amphibians for decades. But scientists are reintroducing the vibrant frog with the hope that a design intervention can help it survive.

The “sauna” is a simple design, with bricks inside a plastic enclosure that heats up in the sun. The bell frog loves sitting in the heat—and conveniently the high temperatures kill the fungus.

“The technology we’re using is extremely low tech,” said Simon Clulow, a conservation ecology professor at the University of Canberra leading the research. “That’s good because everything we do in science and conservation, ideally, we want to be accessible, affordable, and scalable.”

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[Photo: Tyler Cherry/University of Canberra]

A new intervention backed by years of research

Clulow started thinking about the idea as a doctoral student, when he noticed that frogs in a university enclosure liked to sit in the holes inside bricks, probably because they could hide away and feel warmer. At the same time, he knew that the chytrid fungus was most dangerous when frogs got cold. “That led to this idea: Could you create essentially pockets of disease refuge by creating little hot spots in the environment?” he said.

Along with other researchers, he initially tested bricks that were painted black, but they didn’t get quite warm enough, so the small plastic greenhouse was added to help keep the bricks hotter. Research has shown that this type of environment makes a difference.

“We know for sure if we hold the frogs in a temperature-controlled cabinet at those sorts of temperatures for even just a couple of days, it usually leads to complete clearance [of the fungus],” Clulow said. “But even just short-term spikes clearly have beneficial effects.”

© Fast Company