Dancing, starry dwarf and narrow-mouthed: new species make India a frog paradise

Dozens of discoveries in recent years have shown the country to be a treasure trove of amphibians

It is barely the size of a thumbnail, so it may not come as a surprise that it took so long to spot the starry dwarf frog. It was discovered sitting next to some leaf litter by eagle-eyed researchers on a joint US-Indian expedition in thick shola forest in the Western Ghats in Kerala, south India, during a nocturnal hunt.

The starry dwarf frog, or Astrobatrachus kurichiyana, named after a tribe in Wayanad, Kerala, where the frog was found in 2019, is just one of dozens of new species found in recent years that have revealed India to be a frog paradise.