So many species we yet do not know exist. So many mysteries yet to be unraveled by science. It seems like every year, scientists discover new things about our planets. And this is one of those cases.
A few months ago, scientists discovered a new frog species which they decided to call “zombie frog” in the Amazon rainforest of French Guiana. The “zombie frog” receives its name because it only emerges from the ground when it rains.
The new species is characterized by being orange and having specks on its skin. It is totally nocturnal and prefers humid climates to the surface. It lives underground and it only comes out when it rains. Let’s check it out.
The official name of the frog is “Synapturanus zombie sp”. It was discovered by an international team of researchers in the Amazon in French Guiana and northern Brazil. The amphibian is about 40 millimeters long, has a pointed snout, and has small orange spots on the skin of the same tone. The “zombie frog” lives underground and only comes to the surface when it rains
“The sounds of male frogs can only be heard after or during heavy rains,” explains German herpetologist Raffael Ernst, co-author of the study on the discovery. “Their sounds are quite difficult to differentiate” since the animals hide them underground. The characteristic sounds are what differentiate the species and it is the way that scientists have to determine the new discoveries.
According to the researcher, the name “zombie frog” was chosen because “it is the researchers who look like zombies when they extract the frogs from the ground,” and because the animals are usually active at night.
“It’s not that easy to find or collect them because they have really short uptime. We assume that there are six times more species of Synapturanus than we have described so far. Therefore, much work remains to be done, especially since we still cannot conclusively assess the risk status of the species due to the complex data situation,”Ernst said.
The amphibians were identified in the so-called Guiana Shield, which encompasses areas of rainforest in Guyana, French Guiana, and Brazil. Little is known about frogs as they are found in such remote locations.
