7.7 mm the size of the world’s smallest vertebrate Paedophryne amanuensis, discovered in 2009 in Papua New Guinea. The newly described frog species was listed in the Top 10 New Species 2013 by the International Institute for Species Exploration. The frog lives in moist leaf litter and is 3,350 times smaller than the biggest creature ever the blue whale.
The wee frog ousts a small Indonesian fish as the world’s tiniest backboned creature. It was difficult to find partly because its high-pitched mating call sounds like that of an insect, according to the scientist who discovered it, Louisiana State University herpetologist Chris Austin. And also because it is really, really small.
Along with its Lilliputian cuteness, the frog is interesting because some biologists thought an aquatic environment was necessary for the most extreme creatures — water provides buoyancy that could help support the tiniest and the largest animal frames. The previous smallest vertebrate, the carp species Paedocypris progenetica, grows to an adult size of 7.9 to 10.3 millimeters. Compare this to the 25.8-meter (85-foot) blue whale, the largest vertebrate; the subphylum Vertebrata spans three orders of magnitude. But this terrestrial frog shows that water is not necessary for extreme miniaturization.
Credit : Popular Science
Picture Credit : Google
