Sunday, December 23, 2012

CARL MARSHALL: Chinese gliding frogs

The Chinese gliding frog Polypedates dennysii gets its common name from leaping between branches, using the webbing between its feet to act like wings, allowing it to steer through the air. Adhesive pads on its feet help it stick when landing. 
These frogs belong to the taxonomic family Rhacophoridae, can grow to four inches and feed on almost any invertebrates that come close enough to catch.

Eggs are laid in foam nests created by the females by beating a liquid secretion into a foam with her hind legs. 

These colourful frogs have distinctive webbed feet with each digit ending in broad, flat discs, permitting them to climb up smooth surfaces with relative ease.    

According to Dr Karl Shuker's authoritative tome, Extraordinary Animals Revisited (CFZ Press) P. dennysii are said to be capable of gliding up to three times as far as Alfred Russell Wallace's already aerodynamically impressive flying frog Rhacophorus nigropalmatus and reverently worshiped as a god by some of its human neighbours, who carry it in a regal procession upon its own ceremonial chair on certain holy days. These amphibians gliding capabilities were disbelieved by scientists for quite some time, but as Dr Shuker rightly points out scientists will, almost as a matter of course, ignore evidence if provided by uneducated native people. Like many other examples of this type of academic arrogance this theory was of course eventually proven correct. 

Photographs by Philippe Lurin.

Ref
Shuker K.P.N. Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007) CFZ Press: Bideford.

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