France - On a bright summer morning a captive-bred male harvest mouse perches acrobatically in an Alsace wheat field. This species—the smallest European rodent—boasts a prehensile tail and builds a round nest that resembles a bird’s.
Image by J. L. Klein and M. L. Hubert
Photograph by Joel SartorePretty poison: a frog of the Mantella genus, found only on Madagascar.
New Amphibians Found in South America:
The Simpsons Toad: The unnamed, 0.7-inch-long (2-centimeter-long) toad is “easily one of the strangest amphibians I have ever seen,” added Moore, an amphibian-conservation specialist for Conservation International.
Red-Eyed Mystery Toad: Found in steep Colombian cloud forests in September, this new species of toad has baffled scientists. The toad’s genus is still a mystery—as is the reason for its ruby-colored eyes.
New Amphibians Without Arms or Legs Discovered:
They aren’t worms or even snakes. They’re soil-burrowing, limbless amphibians, and they’re completely new to science, a new study suggests.
Pictured guarding a brood of eggs in its native northeastern India, the animal above is one of about six potentially new species belonging to a mysterious group of animals called caecilians. What’s more, the newfound critters represent an entirely new family of amphibians—family being the next major level up from genus and species in scientific naming conventions—according to findings announced today by the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Christened Chikilidae (“Chikila” being a local tribal name for caecilians), the family’s closest relatives live more than 7,000 miles (11,265 kilometers) away in tropical Africa, the study team reported.
