©Alessandro Catenazzi
In southern Peruvian part of the Andes mountains, in the upper Cosnipata Valley, near Cusco, a new species of frog has been discovered by some scientists in the leaf litter of a cloud forest between 9,925 and 10,466 feet (3,025 and 3,190 meters).
©Alessandro Catenazzi
The discovery was not so easy as the frog is the smallest ever found in the Andes and one of the smallest in the world!
The Noblella Pygmea females grow to 0.49 inch (12.4 millimeters) at most. Males make it to only 0.44 inch (11.1 millimeters).
As you can see in the pictures it means that they are smaller than a dime!
©Alessandro Catenazzi
Amother interesting aspect of the new found species is that females hatch only two eggs, a small number for a frog (frogs usually hatch up to hundreds of eggs), and each egg is nearly a third the size of the adult!
©Alessandro Catenazzi
Their reproductive cycle that doesn't rely on water (the frog watch over and keep moist its two eggs, in the leaf litter, until they hatch into froglets) seems also to have protected them from the terrible deadly chytrid fungus, which has killed frogs and salamanders around the world in recent years.
©Alessandro Catenazzi
You can see other picture of this tiny frog in the website of Alessandro Catenazzi, Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley
The habitat of the Noblella Pygmea: High-elevation cloud forest in Manu National Park, Cusco, Peru
©Alessandro Catenazzi
