THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A team of researchers led by Malayali scientist Dr SD Biju from Delhi University has discovered a frog having blue bones and green blood from Arunachal Pradesh.
This is the first Indian frog to exhibit this unique biological trait where their blood is green and their bones are blue in colour. They exhibit this colour through their translucent skin. “This peculiarity is known only in a handful of species in other parts of the world including Southeast Asia and far away regions in Madagascar and South America,” said SD Biju.
The findings have been published in the journal Zootaxa. This was previously reported in the neighbouring regions of China. This frog is included in the genus Gracixalus, a group of tree frogs, in the family Rhacophoridae. According to the researchers, this group of frogs was recently reported from India, until recently represented by a single species, Gracixalus patkaiensis (Pataki green tree frog).
“Finding these tiny frogs in bamboo thickets, from where they make whistling calls, is not easy. Upon eventually locating one, we were amazed by the frog’s completely translucent body and externally visible blue bones and green blood. I had not seen such a frog anywhere in India, in over three decades of my work on Indian amphibians,” SD Biju said.
Out of over 420 species of frogs home to India, Patkai green tree frog is the only one known to show this characteristic. The occurrence of turquoise bones and green blood is also globally rare. The study was undertaken as part of a work by one of the students of Biju, Tage Tago’s PhD research on Amphibians of Arunachal Pradesh.
Meanwhile, during the field surveys in Arunachal Pradesh, the team also discovered two new populations of another species, the Medog small tree frog. This is scientifically known as Gracixalus medogensis. This species was originally described from the Medog region in Tibet, China, in 1984 and knowledge about it remained limited.