ZME Science

The first lungless frog has been discovered lurking in the jungles of Borneo. This amphibian is totally enigmatic, at least until now, for scientists who haven’t been able to figure out how come it gets all its oxygen through its skin.

Scientists first discovered these frogs about 30 years ago but because they’re so rare, just one other specimen had been collected since then and neither had been dissected. The amphibians are no longer than 2 inches long and they live in cold fast waters, in Kalimantan, Borneo.

“No one thought to open them up — there was no real reason to believe that they could be lungless,” said researcher David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore. “Because these specimens were so rare, they had never been dissected. If you have just one specimen in your museum, you don’t want to rip it open!”

“There are so many difficulties in field work, and yet it remains my biggest joy,” Bickford added. “Having the undeniable privilege of going out to these remote sites, seeing some of the last and greatest treasures that exist in the wild, and then getting to study them — well, every day I feel lucky.”
As researchers were doing their job, they were really amazed to see that the frog has actually no lungs.
“At first I did not believe that the frogs had no lungs, but then, we just kept on seeing the evidence pile up. I was flabbergasted,” Bickford said.

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