Contrary to what one would expect, it’s not the fangs of the newly identified Indonesian frog species Limnonectes larvaepartus that makes it the most unique of its kind on earth.
It’s the rather unusual way that it goes around making babies that does.
This little amphibian from the rain forests of Indonesia’s island of Sulawesi is the only one of the world’s 6455 frog species to give direct birth to tadpoles, eschewing the common froggy practice of laying eggs, say scientists.
This member of the Asian group of fanged frogs was first discovered decades ago by Indonesian researcher Djoko Iskandar. Scientists have long thought these particular frogs likely gave birth to tadpoles, but they had never seen the creatures mate or spawn firsthand.
But they found new evidence of the frogs' reproductive behavior recently when University of California, Berkeley herpetologist Jim McGuire, who was exploring the Sulawesi Island rain forests one night, grabbed one that he thought was a male and found instead it was a female that had about a dozen slippery, newborn tadpoles with her.
Reuters/AFP