📸 PhotoPhoto: TimVickers · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons Source
Mountain Chicken
Leptodactylus fallax (Mountain Chicken · Mountain Chicken)
💡 Everyday Comparisons for Size, Mass & Speed
- 💡 Its snout-to-vent length of 28 cm is close to the long side of an A4 sheet of paper (29.7 cm) (Comparison).
- 💡 On Montserrat, researchers determined the age of frogs by analyzing bones from carcasses found after the 2009 fungal disease outbreak.
- 💡 Individuals raised at Jersey Zoo grew larger and lived longer than wild individuals of the same age.
Reference standards: coach bus ~12 m, mid-size car ~4.9 m, compact car ~1 t, basketball hoop 3.05 m, credit card 8.56 cm.
📖 1. Overview
The Mountain Chicken is a very large frog living on Caribbean islands, which researchers view as an example of island gigantism. It is assessed as Critically Endangered (CR, 2017) on the IUCN Red List.
🦴 2. Anatomy & Morphology
Snout-to-vent length has been recorded up to 280 mm.
🔍 3. Ecology & Behavior
Its maximum age determined by skeletochronology is 9 years. After a chytrid fungus outbreak on Montserrat in 2009, researchers studied carcasses and found that individuals raised at Jersey Zoo lived longer and grew larger than wild individuals.
🇰🇷 4. Connection to Korea
No direct record connecting this species to Korea has been found.
📚 Sources & References
- • IUCN Red List CR (2017) — https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/57125/3055585
- • IUCN Red List category CR — latest assessment at iucnredlist.org
- • catalogueoflife.org — 3TN4N
- • iucnredlist.org — 3055585
- • wikidata.org — Q2704588
- • commons.wikimedia.org — File:Leptodactylus fallax (1).jpg
- • thebhs.org — 749-05-huge-but-moderately-long-lived-age-structure-in-the-m
- • Silhouette: PhyloPic — Jose Carlos Arenas-Monroy · CC0 1.0 (Congeneric silhouette — Leptodactylus melanonotus)
Recorded dimensions are widely cited representative estimates from public literature and may vary by study or specimen.