Purple Frog

S.D. Biju of the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute in Palode, India, and Franky Bossuyt of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel initially found the purple frog, also known as the pignose frog, in the Idukki district of Kerala in October 2003. (Free University of Brussels). It’s unique to India’s the Western Ghats, and it went unnoticed until recently because it spends most of the year underground, except for 2-3 weeks during the monsoon when it emerges to mate. Bio-geographers all around the world have described this species as one of the rarest of its kind and a “once in a century find.”

Purple Frog

The story of Maha-Bali, the venerable Asura king, and the Vamana avatar of Vishnu, who steps on the monarch’s head to push him down to Pa-tala, is well-known in Hindu mythology. According to folklore, the monarch visits his subjects once a year, which is commemorated as the Onam festival in Kerala’s southern state. There is a frog species that comes from the underworld once a year in the Kerala stretch of the Western Ghats, similar to the gigantic Maha-Bali-the Purple Frog.

The purple frog has a bloated body and short sturdy limbs, and its color ranges from dark purple to greyish. It has a small head in relation to its total length and an exceptionally pointed nose, measuring about 7 cm. It can burrow underground thanks to its small, powerful forelimbs with rough palms. It has very short hind legs, which prevents it from leaping from one location to another, unlike other frogs. As a result, it has great strides and can cover any distance. To find soil termites underneath, it relies on its sense of smell. There are only 135 known members of this species, with only three of them being females.

Habitat and Ecology

This burrowing frog enjoys soil that is soft, wet, and well-aerated near ponds, ditches, and streams. This allows adults to come out during the monsoon to mate, and females to lay eggs in the water bodies. 

The purple frog comes out to breed at the beginning of the monsoon, laying its eggs in little shaded rocky pools in the bedrock of torrential streams. The transformation of tadpoles takes about 100 days. Adult purple frogs eat termites and other tiny invertebrates. The fossorial (burrowing) lifestyle of purple frogs makes it extremely difficult to research, and there are no current population estimates

Diet and Nutrition 

Their primary food sources are termites and ants. They, like an anteater or a mole, may suck up insects and subsist without ever coming to the surface. Purple frogs have very little information on their diet accessible. Adult purple frogs have been observed eating termites and other small invertebrates found in the vicinity of their habitat. Purple frog tadpoles have been observed clinging to algae-covered stones in water bodies and sucking the algae with their sucker-shaped jaws. Unlike other burrowing frogs, they frequently devour underground critters without coming out to feed, thanks to their unique buccal groove and tongue.

Reproduction

Purple frogs are one of India’s most recently found species, and little is known about them. Everything scientists have learned about their reproduction habits indicates that they require very precise breeding habitats. Although some of their hatching grounds are protected by officials, the majority of them have been harmed by dams built to manage water flow during monsoons. Purple frogs are known to lay their eggs near bodies of water. At a time female frogs have the ability to lay up to 3,000 eggs. After 100 days, these eggs develop into purple frog tadpoles, which then develop into frogs.

Status

Purple frogs have been recognized and categorized as exceedingly rare creatures in India’s Nilgiris and the Western Ghats. They are classified as Endangered by the IUCN and are regarded to be on the verge of extinction due to habitat loss, deforestation, and human encroachment, as well as local people’s consumption of these species.

Distribution in India

The purple frog is only found in India’s the Western Ghats, with reports coming from multiple locales in Kerala and one in Tamil Nadu. Anamalai Tiger Reserve, Periyar Tiger Reserve, and Silent Valley National Park are among the protected places where it has been discovered.

Threats faced

The Indian purple frog is an endemic, one-of-a-kind species that can only be found in the southern Western Ghats.

• The Indian purple frog, first described in 2003, is threatened by habitat loss as its forests are turned to agriculture.

• Researchers studied a portion of its habitat for five years and discovered that tadpole harvesting by local people may be wreaking havoc on populations.

• Community outreach and education campaigns, however, they claim, can help persuade individuals to stop eating them.

Conclusion

Thus, Purple frogs are very important to the ecosystem so it’s our duty to conserve them by building local capacity and infrastructure which may be the most effective approach to speed the discovery of new species in remote locations, and also Nasikabatrachus might serve as a symbol for the protection of significant habitats in the region.