New Species: The smallest frog in the Andes

Image from Scientific American

A frog the size of a dime? Yes, it’s not optical illusion but a real one, which has been discovered in the forests of Peru. At 3,000 metres in the Andes in the Manu National Park, German and Peruvian herpetologists (a zoologist who studies reptiles and amphibians) heard the croaking of the Noble’s Pygmy Frog. It’s small size left it unseen for such a long time and its brown color camouflaged it perfectly among the leaves.

The midget frog inhabits the cloud forests, that is, the high elevation grasslands in south eastern Peru. More than ten different species of frog have been discovered in these cloud forests in the past two years. But the pygmy frog has some special talents like laying huge eggs that skip the tadpole phase altogether and just hatch into mini replicas of their thumbnail sized parents.

Read more about the pygmy frog

The smallest Indian frog