Aussie researchers discover ‘parachuting frog’ in remote jungles

A team of Australian researchers has discovered a new species of parachuting frog, hidden away in the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The group of scientists from Griffith University and Queensland state museum, also came across two other previously unknown frog species during their expedition around Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

There is an incredible diversity of frogs and a lot of those species have only been described for the last 10-20 years, senior curator at Queensland Museum Paul Oliver told Xinhua on Friday.

"The more you go back, the more you get to new areas, the more you find new species."

Officially named Litoria pinocchio and Litoria vivissimia, the other two look similar to regular tree frogs. However, the previously unknown creatures have a small spike protruding from the tips of their snouts.

The third newly found frog called Litoria pterodactyla or the parachuting frog (cover photo), has an entirely different distinction.

"It's a big green frog with lots of webbing on its toes," Oliver explained.

"They live high in the forest canopy and if they want to move they will just jump into the air and they spread their fingers and toes, and then they can control their descent down."

While this is the first recorded sightings of the three species, Oliver said, that doesn't necessarily mean they're rare.

"There's lots of forest where they occur and in the areas where they live there's not many people, so there's not a reason to feel like they're going to lose their forest home in the future, so we would guess that their population is secure."

"But the honest answer is for each of the three frogs, we've seen them only once. So we just don't know."

- Bernama