Read more: Click here to read the original, longer version of this story.
(Image: Luiz Fernando Ribeiro, CC BY SA)
CUTE as a button and about as small as one too. The mini-frog pictured below is one of the smallest ever discovered at roughly a centimetre long. It is one of seven species recently found in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
Advertisement
The discovery hints that there may be more species of these tiny frogs to come, say at the Federal University of Paran谩 in Brazil and colleagues, who discovered and described the new species (PeerJ, 10.7717/peerj.1011).
The frogs鈥� bright colour may be a warning to predators about their poisonous skin, which contains a potent neurotoxin. But getting eaten could be the least of their worries.
Restricted to mountaintop cloud forests, where their habitat could be shrinking due to climate change, deforestation and cattle ranching, they could be at risk of extinction.
These Brachycephalus frogs are among the smallest terrestrial vertebrates, joining the ranks of little frogs from other parts of the world. At 7.7 millimetres long, a species from Papua New Guinea claims the title of world鈥檚 smallest vertebrate.
A slightly larger frog from the Seychelles, measuring 11 millimetres long, has a head too tiny to contain full ears so it hears through its mouth instead.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淣ew species of tiny frog found鈥�