Tiny Frogs Caught Turning Bamboo Shoots Into Bachelor Pads

This little green frog goes by many names: Günther's bush frog, the white-spotted bush frog, chalazodes bubble-nest frog, Raorchestes chalazodes. But, if you're not into the whole brevity thing, acts-out-your-Sims-fantasies-inside-bamboo frog would be a pretty fair moniker, too.

Researchers at the National University of Singapore recently discovered this unusual amphibian behavior, in which the frogs squirm through tiny cracks in bamboo shoots to mate, lay eggs and care for young:

A frog disappears into a crack in a bamboo shaft, in sequence by alphabetical order. (Credit: Seshadri K S)

It's the first time frogs have been spotted turning bamboo shoots into sex-pads-slash-nurseries, the scientists report in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. Though the frogs are tiny - about an inch long - the cracks they fit through are smaller still, about a tenth of an inch wide. After squeezing through the narrow opening, the male frogs call out to females, who lay egg clutches within the hollow shoot.

That's not the only biological quirk of the white-spotted bush frogs - born as froglets, they skip the tadpole stage and are raised by dad inside the bamboo. Listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the frogs were thought to be extinct for nearly a century, until a handful were discovered in India.