Picture of the Month – the Tiny Bubble-Nest Frog (without Tadpoles)
Sunday, 30 August 2026
Frogs are usually pretty small, but this one takes the biscuit. This is the tiny bubble-nest frog (Raorchestes parvulus), which also goes by other names – the Karin bubble-nest frog, dwarf bushfrog and even cricket frog. It is found in eastern Bangladesh, and its territory also includes Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia. Some scientists believe that it is a complex of more than one species (that’s a group of closely related species that are very similar and can be difficult to tell apart). Image
As one of its names suggests, it’s tiny. Males can grow up to 23mm in length (from
snout to bum) while the female maxes out at 21mm. They
have a rounded snout and short fingers and toes (that come complete with
adhesive discs). The male, as you can
see from the picture, has a very large vocal sac which it uses to attract
females at mating time.
Raorchestes parvulus is generally described as having
direct development, meaning it does not have a free-living tadpole stage. Instead,
the eggs develop directly into tiny froglets inside the egg, which hatch
already resembling miniature frogs. Tnat was news to me - I always had believed that all species of frogs went through a tadpole stage but apparently, although straight to froglet is uncommon, it happens more than we might imagine. Although the species is probably impacted by habitat loss due to logging
and agriculture, because of its wide spread, it is not considered threatened. Of course, that brings us back to what was
mentioned at the beginning of this post – if this is a complex, then who is to
say how many species there are that look so alike, and how many we have already
lost?
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