SCIENCE LAB SCAMPER : SMALL SINGERS [1]

 

A prodigiously jumping frog so tiny that it's called a flea. At 6.95 millimeters in length, this creature could fit on your fingertip. It is smaller than several ant species. 

While it sounds like cricket, it's not an insect. It's a frog. The recently discovered animal is one of the smallest known vertebrates.

'' We are talking about the limits of life size on Earth,'' said Luis Filipe Toledo, a herpetologist at the University of Campinas in Brazil.

He and colleagues described the frog in a study published in the journal Peer J, naming it Brachycephalus dacnis after the Dacnis conservation project through which it was spotted.

Dr. Toledo got his first hint about the tiny frog when a colleague shared several audio recordings of miniature frog species he was collecting in the Atlantic forest of Brazil. As soon as he listened, he knew he was hearing something novel.

'' Oh, that's actually two species that you have in your hands,'' Dr. Toledo recalls saying.

Brazil's Atlantic forest has many frogs of the Brachy-cephalus genus, which are known also as saddleback toads. 

Their penchant for springing around and leaping distances about 30 times their body length has led to the nickname '' flea toadlets.''

This Science Lab Publishing continues to Part 2. [ Sophia Quaglia ]