The frog—named for a Peruvian
mountain range—went undiscovered for decades partly because its home was a
hotbed of drug activity.
By Michael Greshko
PUBLISHED AUGUST 25, 2016
On the foothills of the Andes in
central Peru, a
brilliantly colored frog lives out a fractured fairy tale.
Once upon a time—specifically,
one evening in November 2014—biologist Germán Chávez heard a
call echo through the highest-altitude forests ofTingo María National Park. Chávez
didn’t recognize the call, so he went out to find the source of the distinctive
chirps. Up in a tree, he found a little brown frog less than an inch (2.5
centimeters) long—and quickly realized that like the frogs in stories, this one
was more than meets the eye.
“We could see the bright red
legs, and that was a surprise,” says Chávez, a biologist with Peru’s Center of Ornithology and Biodiversity. “We
have never seen a frog like that.”
Frogs come in a dazzling variety
of colors, and depending on the genus, so do their crotches: Related frogs have
splotches of yellow, brown, and even orange on their groins, thighs, and
shanks. But to see such bright pigmentation—and red, at that—caught the
researchers off-guard. (See “New
Amazon Frog Named After Mythical Monster.”)
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