Interest in Desert Rain Frog Surges Thanks to YouTube Video
Posted on February 20, 2013
This video of a desert rain frog (Breviceps macrops) has been viraling around the Internet, primarily because the frog looks cute and has an unusual squeaky call. The video has quickly garnered over 2 million views since being posted by wildlife enthusiast Dean Boshoff about a week ago. The stocky little frog looks inflated and has large bulging eyes. It is very small with a body that reaches only about 6 mm in length, according to AmphibiaWeb. The frog uses its paddle-like feet to burrow into the sand dunes in Namibia and South Africa.
The desert rain frog cannot hop because of its very small limbs. It comes out a night to hunt for dung, where it finds beetles and other insects to eat. The frog is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
In the video the frog initially looks like it could be making the squeaking noise to scare of an intruder, but the research gathered about it on AmhibiaWeb says males sometimes call in choruses. Take a look: