PURPLE FROG

May 7, 2019

Purple frog could soon be designated as Kerala’s state amphibian – a title that researchers hope would go a long way in protecting it’s fragile habitat. A proposal for this has been floated by state’s leading Herpetologists.

About:

Scientific Name: Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis.
Common Name: It is also known as Purple Frog, Maveli frog or Pignose Frog.
Family: The purple frog is a frog species belonging to the family Sooglossidae.
Features:
- Its body appears robust and bloated and is relatively rounded compared to other flattened frogs. Compared to other frogs, N. sahyadrensis has a small head and an unusual pointed snout.
- Adults are typically dark purplish-grey in color.
- It lives almost its entire life in underground tunnels, comes out to the surface for a single day in a year to breed.
Distribution: Earlier thought to be restricted to the south of the Palghat Gap in the Western Ghats, the species is now known to be quite widely distributed in the Western Ghats.
History: Herpetologists believe that the species should be rightly called a ‘living fossil’ as it’s evolutionary roots suggest it could have shared space with dinosaurs going back almost 70 million years ago.
Conservation Status: It listed as endangered on the red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).