The Malabar Gliding Frog

I’ve never really liked frogs and for years I always avoided them. Unlike snakes which are very dry to the touch most frogs are extremely slimy. Some tend to urinate when handled (a trick of theirs that I find especially revolting!) so I rarely if ever handled them. Infact the few times I actually handled one was when I had to feed some of the snakes that I had rescued!

Recently however I’ve started watching a lot of David Attenborough’s nature documentaries and even though I still can’t say I like frogs atleast I’m beginning to take an interest in learning somethings about them.

My recent trip to the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station turned out to be the perfect place to kickstart my frog study. It was the peak of the monsoon and there were lots of frogs and lots of students studying them there!

My first nightwalk found me five species of frogs! I was immediately hooked for life!

One of the very beautiful species I found that night was the Malabar Gliding Frog. Actually I saw a mating pair! The smaller male sat on the back of the female and held her under the armpits. That position is apparently called Axillary Amplexus.

Strangely though they were sitting in a puddle of water. This species of frog does not usually like to sit in water but they do build foam nests which are attached to vegetation some meters above a pool. It was quite possible that the pair had slipped and fallen into the pool below.

The Malabar Gliding Frog is endemic to the Western Ghats.When jumping the frog extends the webs of all four limbs and can glide slantingly from a tree over a distance of ten meters.

J.C. Daniel’s book mentions that in captivity during the day the frogs usually rested on the leaves with their legs gathered together and body flattened, with the forefeet folded underneath their body, and the pupils contracted to tiny slits. This posture and their leaf green colour render them almost invisible among the leaves.