- Feb 5, 2002
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In a new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers have described a new species of fanged frog: the smallest one ever discovered.
In general, frogs’ teeth aren’t anything to write home about—they look like pointy little pinpricks lining the upper jaw. But one group of stream-dwelling frogs in Southeast Asia has a strange adaptation: two bony “fangs” jutting out of their lower jawbone.
There are over 70 species of these Dracula frogs, and they use these fangs to battle with each other over territory and mates, and sometimes, incredibly, even to hunt tough-shelled prey like giant centipedes and crabs.
In collaboration with the Bogor Zoology Museum, a team from the McGuire Lab at Berkeley found the frogs on Sulawesi, a rugged, mountainous island that makes up part of Indonesia.
“It’s a giant island with a vast network of mountains, volcanoes, lowland rainforest, and cloud forests up 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 Jeff Frederick, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago and the study’s lead author.
Continued below.
www.goodnewsnetwork.org
In general, frogs’ teeth aren’t anything to write home about—they look like pointy little pinpricks lining the upper jaw. But one group of stream-dwelling frogs in Southeast Asia has a strange adaptation: two bony “fangs” jutting out of their lower jawbone.
There are over 70 species of these Dracula frogs, and they use these fangs to battle with each other over territory and mates, and sometimes, incredibly, even to hunt tough-shelled prey like giant centipedes and crabs.
In collaboration with the Bogor Zoology Museum, a team from the McGuire Lab at Berkeley found the frogs on Sulawesi, a rugged, mountainous island that makes up part of Indonesia.
“It’s a giant island with a vast network of mountains, volcanoes, lowland rainforest, and cloud forests up 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 Jeff Frederick, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago and the study’s lead author.
Continued below.
‘New Species’ of Frog With Fangs Hunts Crabs Even Though it’s No Bigger Than a Quarter
“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.”
www.goodnewsnetwork.org
