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.
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.
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?
The study is published in Zoologica Scripta.
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