• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Tiny Frog The Size Of A Pea May Be World’s Smallest Vertebrate

February 15, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Fans of adorably small animals rejoice: A teeny tiny flea toad (Brachycephalus pulex) may have taken the title of tiniest frog, and also tiniest vertebrate, in the world.

When we say teeny tiny, we aren’t messing. B. pulex is smaller than a pea, with males averaging just over 7 millimeters (0.28 inches) long, and females a little over 8 millimeters (0.32 inches), according to new research that has investigated its credentials as a record-breakingly small species.

Advertisement

The pocket-sized amphibians, known as flea toads despite being frogs, are endemic to southern Bahia, Brazil, and were first described in 2011. However, too few had been studied, and their adult status not confirmed, to nail them as the world’s teeniest frogs.

“Identifying the smallest frog in the world has been no easy challenge,” the team behind the new study explains. Hoping to change that, they measured the body lengths of 46 B. pulex individuals and compared them with other diminutive frog species, including the previously-identified “tiniest frog in the world”, Paedophryne amauensis.

They found that some male B. pulex were smaller than known P. amauensis individuals. However, data on females of the latter species is scarce, so they compared the size of female B. pulex with the next smallest species, P. verrucosa, finding, again, that B. pulex were smaller.

The researchers also assessed the frogs’ maturity by examining their gonads, confirming they were adults.

Advertisement

With all this taken into account, B. pulex “can be crowned as the tiniest frog and vertebrate species in the world, being closely followed by Paedophryne species from Papua New Guinea,” they conclude.

Love that for them. 

“It’s absolutely clear,” Dr Mark Scherz at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, told New Scientist. “These really are potentially the smallest extant frogs in the world, which is astonishing.”

If B. pulex hasn’t scratched your teeny weeny animals itch, check out the world’s smallest chameleon, or how about the littlest crocodile, which has an a-moo-sing trick up its sleeve?

Advertisement

The study is published in Zoologica Scripta.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-Manchester test likely to be postponed after India COVID-19 case
  2. NYC passes bills to improve conditions of app-based delivery workers
  3. Elevate launches its approach to managing pre-tax benefits with $12M Series A
  4. Formula Calculate Any Digit Of Pi, Nobody Noticed For Centuries

Source Link: Tiny Frog The Size Of A Pea May Be World’s Smallest Vertebrate

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • The “Rumpelstiltskin Effect”: When Just Getting A Diagnosis Is Enough To Start The Healing
  • In 1962, A Boy Found A Radioactive Capsule And Brought It Inside His House — With Tragic Results
  • This Cute Creature Has One Of The Largest Genomes Of Any Mammal, With 114 Chromosomes
  • Little Air And Dramatic Evolutionary Changes Await Future Humans On Mars
  • “Black Hole Stars” Might Solve Unexplained JWST Discovery
  • Pretty In Purple: Why Do Some Otters Have Purple Teeth And Bones? It’s All Down To Their Spiky Diets
  • The World’s Largest Carnivoran Is A 3,600-Kilogram Giant That Weighs More Than Your Car
  • Devastating “Rogue Waves” Finally Have An Explanation
  • Meet The “Masked Seducer”, A Unique Bat With A Never-Before-Seen Courtship Display
  • Alaska’s Salmon River Is Turning Orange – And It’s A Stark Warning
  • Meet The Heaviest Jelly In The Seas, Weighing Over Twice As Much As A Grand Piano
  • For The First Time, We’ve Found Evidence Climate Change Is Attracting Invasive Species To Canadian Arctic
  • What Are Microfiber Cloths, And How Do They Clean So Well?
  • Stowaway Rat That Hopped On A Flight From Miami Was A “Wake-Up Call” For Global Health
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version