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

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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.