The Kermit Sutra has got a new chapter

FOR those who take a keen interest in the love lives of frogs, it is news that will leave them trembling with excitement.

Previous research had apparently revealed that when the amphibians felt amorous, they restricted themselves to six sexual positions.

Now, it has emerged, there’s a seventh. And by frog standards, it’s pretty daring.

Called the Dorsal Straddle, the position was found to be used by the Bombay night frog, which lives in India – appropriately the land which produced the Kama Sutra.

The position, unlike that in any frog or toad out of the other 7,000 species around the world, does not involve any direct physical contact between the male and female.

To perform the manoeuvre, the male grips a leaf or twig above his mate and then fertilises her before moving away so that she can lay her eggs.

Usually female frogs have their eggs fertilised while they grip their mate around the belly or under the front legs.

The authors of the research said: ‘We speculate that a loose form of contact, with the male holding on to the substrate [twig] rather than to the female, as seen during a Dorsal Straddle, might function to avoid falling and interrupting mating.’

Lead researcher Professor Sathyabhama Das Biju, from the University of Delhi, said: ‘This is a remarkable frog with an unprecedented reproductive behaviour.’

He added: ‘This discovery is fundamental for understanding the evolutionary ecology and behaviour in anuran amphibians [frogs and toads].’

In addition, the researchers found that fights were common between male Bombay night frogs in competition for mates.

The findings are reported in the biomedical science journal PeerJ.