Frogs are well known for their sticky, whip-like tongues, lumpy warts, and the colorful, poisonous skin covering some species. One group of frogs in Southeast Asia has another distinguishing feature–fangs. Scientists recently discovered a new species of fanged frog that uses these bony jaws jutting out of their lower jawbone to fight with other frogs and hunt shelled prey like giant centipedes and crabs. Limnonectes phyllofolia is also the smallest known species of fanged frog and is described in a study published December 20 in the journal PLOS ONE.
[Related: Female frogs appear to play dead to avoid mating.]
“This new species is tiny compared to other fanged frogs on the island where it was found, about the size of a quarter,” study co-author and biologist Jeff Frederick said in a statement. “Many frogs in this genus are giant, weighing up to two pounds. At the large end, this new species weighs about the same as a dime.” Frederick is a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago and conducted this research as a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley.
The frogs were found on the mountainous island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. It’s a large 71,898 square mile-long island with a large network of volcanoes, mountains, lowland rainforest, and cloud forests in the mountains.
“The presence of all these different habitats mean that the magnitude of biodiversity across many plants and animals we find there is unreal—rivaling places like the Amazon,” said Frederick.
Members of a joint United States-Indonesia amphibian and reptile research team noticed something surprising on the leaves of tree saplings and moss-covered boulders in the jungle–frog eggs.
Frogs lay eggs covered by a jelly-like substance instead of a hard and protective shell like a bird. To keep them from drying out, most amphibians will lay their…
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