World's smallest known vertebrate

Above is the world's smallest known vertebrate, Paedophryne amanuensis. Researchers found the frog in 2010 in southern Papua New Guinea and just announced the discovery yesterday. From National Geographic:

Scientists locate the teensy animals by listening for their calls and trying to zero in on the sources of the sounds—no mean feat, since the high pitch of the calls make their sources especially hard for human hearing to locate.

(Louisiana State University biologist Christopher) Austin and graduate student Eric Rittmeyer tried four times to find the frogs before exasperatedly grabbing a big handful of leaf litter and putting it in a plastic bag.

The scientists then combed through the contents until "eventually we saw this tiny thing hop off one of the leaves," Austin said.

"World's Smallest Frog Found—Fly-Size Beast Is Tiniest Vertebrate"

• [Michael Sheehan]

  A great story. The exasperated leaf-grabbing is wonderful.

• [Vnend]

  Wow, that’s tiny.

  My father-in-law will be delighted but envious.

• [raresaturn]

  wow that’s a huge coin!

• [Incipient Madness]

  I think there may be a smaller vertebrate. This little fish might be longer than the frog, but I bet it weighs less. 
  http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2006/jan/news_7501.html

• [Nagurski]

  I thought spring peepers were tiny. This is a triumph of tinosity.

• [william beaty]

  Smallest adult.     How small are the babies at the point when they’ve absorbed their tails?

  Instead of springtime hoards of baby toads sweeping across towns in upstate NY, you’d have a sort of black powder which sweeps across …a dollar bill.

  • [Beanolini]

    How small are the babies

    Apparently, related species hatch at 2.5mm length (they have no free-swimming tadpole stage).

    Incidentally, it’s ‘amauensis’ (after the village of Amau), not ‘amanuensis’ as above- that means something quite different.

    • [Rich Keller]

      I misread it as amanuensis, originally.
      Okay, the name makes sense now. I was wondering how something so diminutive could take short hand. I thought maybe they laid their eggs in the steno pool.

• [Michael Smith]

  That vertebrate must have small vertebrae.

• [dhelling]

  The comment about smallest adult above is a good one.  Here’s a  pic I took of a somewhat smaller frog (I would assume a juvenile)  in a flower that I noticed in a Buddhist monastery in  Hue Vietnam.  I thought  it was a bug until it started hopping around and stood still just long enough for the photo.

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhelling01/561616532/

• [Romeo Vitelli]

  It may be small but it has backbone.  So watch your step!

• [Jake0748]

  Those little froggies are REALLY quick. Even better, they can stop on a dime!

• [sean]

  You can’t trust scientists, what with all the global warming hokum. Maybe they made a giant coin to make a normal frog look tiny. Plus I don’t recall this frog being mentioned in the bible.

  • [habbi1974]

    animals smaller than 5mm were in noah’s ark, just not listed

• [awjt]

  That little froggy is suuuuuper cute!!~~!!  LIKE!!!

• [jackie31337]

  In keeping with the principle that anything diminutive is automatically cute, my first thought on seeing this frog was “squeeeeeeeee!”

• [piminnowcheez]

  I’m thinking it must be the smallest *terrestrial* vertebrate, no?  Surely there are smaller fish?

• [Guest]

  Surely they’ve located a smaller backbone? I can think of a certain former MA governor in the news lately….