Incredibly Tiny Frog Discovered

This newly discovered frog, full-grown, is only 0.3937 inches or 10 mm (or 1 cm) tiny, and is shown above sitting on an Indian 5 rupee coin.

Delhi University Systematics biologist S. D. Biju and his colleagues have found this new frog, India’s smallest land vertebrate, in the Western Ghats of Kerala, a mountainous region in the western portion of India.

The humid rainforests of the Western Ghats are the perfect habitat for these nocturnal frogs, which enjoy making mating calls from under leaf litter and among the roots of ferns during the monsoon months.

The common name for its genus is “Nightfrog,” and Biju has scientifically named the frog, Nyctibatrachus minimus.

Other extremely small frogs exist in various parts of the world, including Cuba, the Amazon and Borneo.

Biju has been searching in the Western Ghats to find new species of frogs for the past several years, and his discoveries include the purple frog (Nasikabatrachus) and the first canopy frog (Philautus nerostagona) from India.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Email • Facebook • Twitter •