Christine Peterson

The amphibian “IVF clinic” fighting to save the first amphibian ever afforded federal protections. Strings of eggs from breeding pairs of the Houston toad at the Fort Worth Zoo are prepared for release into a pond at Griffith League Ranch. Each bag of eggs is filled with local pond water to acclimatize them to temperature and water quality and then emptied into floating bags that will help protect the eggs as they develop into tadpoles. Julia Robinson for Vox Love — or at least sex — was in the air of the small, windowless, biosecure room at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas. Sixteen rectangular, clear plastic bins lined the room’s back and side walls, tiny stages for unlikely romances. Each bin contained a plastic green pond plant — the kind you would buy for fish to make Nemo feel at home — about an inch of water, and two endangered Houston toads, a drab-looking critter with a pale belly, dark spots, and raised patches of skin that, in a betrayal of the stereotypes, aren’t