Treasure of the month March: The frog with the hole in the head

1 March 2018

Photo: UHH/CeNak, Haas

The eardrum of the Huia cavitympanum from Borneo is deeply sunken in the ear. Its larvae have also developed special characteristics.

Our treasure of the month March is a hole-in-the-head frog, the Huia cavitympanum. It lives in the rainforest on the island of Borneo. It got its name because its eardrum is deeply recessed and transparent in the ear and it looks like it has a deep hole there. The special thing about it, however, is perhaps rather its hearing ability, because it has been proven that the males call in the ultrasonic range and thus their hearing ability also goes far beyond that of humans.

Tadpoles are highly adapted stream dwellers. They have developed a ventral suction cup with which they can attach themselves to the rocky substrate with great strength. This also allows them to live in rushing rapids where no other tadpole can otherwise hold on. These larvae were collected for LIB by Prof. Dr. Alexandre Haas (Department of Herpetology). As part of her master's thesis at LIB, Li Lin Gan scientifically studied the anatomy of the ventral sucker in and published in 2015:

Gan, L. L., Hertwig, S. T., Das, I. and Haas, A. (2016), The anatomy and structural connectivity of the abdominal sucker in the tadpoles of Huia cavitympanum, with comparisons to Meristogenys jerboa (Lissamphibia: Anura: Ranidae). J Zoolog Syst Evol Res, 54: 46-59. doi:10.1111/jzs.12113.

More on the Herpetology Department at LIB: https://www.cenak.uni-hamburg.de/forschung/abteilungen/herpetologie.html

View all "Treasures of the Month": https://www.cenak.uni-hamburg.de/aktuelles/schatz-des-monats.html