Scientists in Borneo don't need to kiss this frog - he's already their little prince charming .Researches say they've found a new kind of frog that might be the smallest such amphibian outside the Americas.
The pea-sized frog , dubbed Microhyla nepenticola , measures between 10.6 and 12.8 millimeters in length, making it small enough to live insides puddles that accumulate in picter plants in the forests of the Southeast Asian island.
Some frogs eat flies . This tiny amphibian is not much bigger than one. The Microhyla nepenthicola , a newly discovered speices of frog, lives in the jungle on the island of Borneo in Malaysia. It is barely larger than a pea.
Despite the frog's small size , Robin Moore , amphibian conservation officer with Conservation Internatoinal , says the tiny speices represents a big scientific discovery.
"Such small speices are very interesting because they're really reached the boundaries of what is possible in the animal world," Moore said. "These are some of the smallest tetrapods - or four-legged organisms - in the world."
"There sized is very interesting from an evolutionary point of view," Moore added. "what it allows these frogs to do is ex[loit new habitats. In this case , the miniature frogs use their small size to live inside a pitcher plant - a kind of flora that feeds off of decomposing organic matter it collects inside a picter-shaped chalice.
The frogs lay their eggs on the plant, and the tadpoles mature in puddles inside the plant's pitcher. While the plant provides a safe habitat for the frogs, its unclear what, it anything , the tiny amphibians give back to their botanical abode.
"I'm not sure if [the pitcher plant ] is getting much out of it , but maybe the tadpoles or the frogs are excerting things into the water that the plant is using as a food source," Moore speculated.
Just a handful of speices of frogs are thought to be smaller , such as the Brazil's gold frog and Cuba's Eleutherodactylus iberia. And this newfound frog is the smallest animal in the Old World , the researches wrote in an article in Zootaxa (PDF)
The diminutive frogs are so tiny they were once overlooked bt scientists.
Lead researcher Indraneil das told The Christian Science Monitor that scientists had actually discovered the frog more than 100 years ago but "presumably thought they were juveniles of other speices," Thankfully , for Das, these puny frogs happen to have big vouces.
das and his research partner , Alexander Hass , were in Kubah National Park when they heard the tiny frogs making calls (listen here ) a behavior only exhibited by adult frogs.
Das eventually trapped one specimen in a clean white daiper he had brought along for his baby son, acording to the New York Post.
"It's a call that actually gave it away," Moore said.
My spin : Scientists are finding new speices all the time, so lets help put a halt to global warming to save the speices we have and the ones that's being discovered each day....we are have a part to play in this game....but hey, that's just me.
Kicking back and keeping it real .
Rio De Janeiro (July 13) - The bright pink color gives them a striking appearance in the muddy jungle waters. That Amazon river dolphins are also gentle and curious makes them easy targets for nets and harpoons as they swim fearless up to fishing boats.
Now their carcasses are showing up in record numbers on the river banks, their flesh torn away for fishing bait, causes researchers to warn of a growing threat to a species that has already disappeared in other parts of the world. "The poppulation of the river dolphins will collapse if these fishermen are not stopped from killing them," said Vera da Silva, the top aquatic mammals expert at the governments's Institute of Amazonian Research .
The dolphins are attractive to anglers for their fatty flesh that is highly- effective bait for catching a type of catfish called pircatinga."This is most definitelya threat to the future of this river dolphin species, said Allison Wood, with the England-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. "This is a relatively new threat, but clearly an extremely serious one. Migueis said he warned Ibama and others authorities numerous times about the dolphin slaughter , but his reports fell on deaf ears.
Growing up to 8 feet (2.5 meters) long and weighing as 400 pounds (180 kilograms ), Amazon river dolphins are the largest of four (4) species known to exist in Sourth America and Asia. Their genetic siblings have already died off elsewhere; The Yangzte river dolphin in China was declared functionally extinct in 2006, the victim of pollution, over fishing and increased boat traffic.
For centuries they have been revered by locals and protected by myth. According to one tale, the dolphins tranform into handsome men and leave the water at nght, seducing and impregneting local women before returning to the river. Many simply consider it bad luck to kill them, given their supposed magical attributes. But today, the quick payoff is trumping legend and superstition.
"Killing the dolphins is a fast and easy way for the fishmen to make money. It costs nothing but time," Vera da Silva said." It's ugly because these dolphins have a folkloric value in the Amazon, and all that is disappearing for the sake of using them for bait.
My spin: What's happening to people, they have no regard for anything (man or beast). The scientists may be able to learn something from these beautiful creatures. Meanwhile, the International Union of Conservetion of Nature lists the ganges river dolphin in India as endangered, and the Irrawaddy river dolphin in Bangladash as vulnerable. Lets get moving folks, once a species is gone, that's it , so come on folks we have our work cut out for us....saving our planet from Global Warming and saving the endangered species....so join in the fight.
Kicking back and keeping it real
The bell frog thought to be extinct has been found in rural Australian farmland.To find this species that haven't been seen for 30 years was a great find.Seven of 216 known Australian frogs have disappeared in the last 30 years.So listen up people, we need to get our heads out our butts and start doing something about Climate Change. If we work together we can save a lot of endangered species and ourselves.
[ Just a reminder: Don't stick your head up your arse like the man below, he lives in a make believe world...pretending "Climate Change" is not happening will not fix the problem.]
