A frog in India has a mushroom sprouting out of it. Researchers have never seen...

[Bogertophis]

Bizarre...

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/29/world...scn/index.html

A frog in India has a mushroom sprouting out of it. Researchers have never seen anything like it



By Taylor Nicioli, CNN

5 minute read
Published 2:32 PM EST, Thu February 29, 2024









A frog with a tiny mushroom sprouting out of its flank was observed at a roadside pond in Karnataka, India, in a first-of-its-kind discovery.
Lohit Y T


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CNN —
When observing a hoard of golden-backed frogs at a roadside pond in Karnataka, India, a group of naturalists noticed something odd about one of the amphibians — the animal had a tiny mushroom sprouting out of its side.
How the seemingly healthy frog came to grow its fungi companion — an occurrence that’s never been documented before — has left scientists baffled, according to a note published in January in the journal Reptiles and Amphibians.
“When I first observed the frog with the mushroom, I was amazed and intrigued by the sight,” said Lohit Y T, a rivers and wetlands specialist with World Wildlife Fund-India in Bengaluru, via email. Y T was a part of the group that discovered the frog. “My thought was to document it, as this phenomenon is something we have never heard of. We just wanted this to be a rare incident and not a dangerous phenomenon for the frog.”
The species — known as Rao’s intermediate golden-backed frog, or the scientific name Hylarana intermedia — is found in abundance in the southwestern Indian states of Karnataka and Kerala. The frogs are small, growing to be only up to 2.9 inches (7.4 centimeters) in length.

[Malum Argenteum]

I almost cannot believe that a professional ecologist would not have collected that frog for further study.

The fruiting body is protruding from the frog at an odd angle -- forward, instead of upward as might be expected. I suspect that the mushroom is attached to a small piece of wood that penetrated the frog's side following a hard contact. There seems to be no involvement with the surrounding skin or tissues, so it seems very unlikely to be actually growing on the frog.

[Bogertophis]

I don't think I'd harvest this "mushroom" for a sir-fry (-holding my hand over my mouth). I was thinking it looks like a nodular melanoma- they're mushroom shaped & according to Banner Health (& to be clear, they weren't discussing frogs): "Nodular melanoma is the second most common type of melanoma. It's fast-spreading and grows down into the skin. It's a raised growth, shaped like a mushroom, usually black, red, pink or skin colored."

Yes, they really needed to verify this "find".

[MrMoyb]

I almost cannot believe that a professional ecologist would not have collected that frog for further study.

The fruiting body is protruding from the frog at an odd angle -- forward, instead of upward as might be expected. I suspect that the mushroom is attached to a small piece of wood that penetrated the frog's side following a hard contact. There seems to be no involvement with the surrounding skin or tissues, so it seems very unlikely to be actually growing on the frog.

I'm also a frog and fungi enthusiast, and that was my thought exactly.

The skin doesn't look irritated at all, so a tiny piece of mycelium-saturated debris must have just barely stuck on/in the skin and gave rise to a fruiting body. Or maybe the debris was embedded a while ago, the acute inflammatory response had long since passed, and as the frog's body pushed the encapsulated offender out the exposure to air triggered fruiting?

At least, this is the convoluted story I tell myself so I don't have nightmares about a frog-zombie apocalypse.