New frog might croak
Seen from above, the tiny green-spotted frogHy ali no bat ra chi um yaku appears quite ordinary. Turn it over, however, and there’s a surprise waiting. The skin on its belly is wonderfully transparent, revealing its internal organs.
Newly discovered by a research team from the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, the frog is related to other so-called “glass frogs” found in the tropical regions of the Americas.
Little is known about H. yaku but, as its discoverers note in the journal Zookeys, it is assumed to be endangered like its cousins because of “habitat destruction and/or pollution mainly because of oil and mining activities”.