The health-giving benefits of Jacuzzis—for frogs

cushy number compared with the rigours of the wild. No predators. Little risk of disease. And a guaranteed food supply that you don’t have to work for. But that makes you soft. And if the purpose of your captivity is eventual reintroduction into a natural habitat, because you are a member of a rare species that human beings would rather did not become extinct, then having to make your own way in the world when that moment arrives can come as a rude awakening.This is a problem faced by the mountain yellow-legged frogs which are part of a captive-breeding programme run by San Diego Zoo that is intended to boost that species’ numbers in the mountain streams of California. But, as she reports in the , Talisin Hammond of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the arm of the zoo in charge of the programme, has a plan to do something about it. She is limbering up her charges prior to their release by putting them on the aqueous equivalent of a treadmill.