Amphibians
Desert Rain Frog
Breviceps macrops · also called desert rain frog, web-footed rain frog, Boulenger's short-headed frog
The desert rain frog is a small, spherical, permanently disgruntled-looking frog that lives in one of the least frog-friendly places imaginable — a strip of bare sand dunes on the southwest African coast where it essentially never rains. It gets by on fog, skips the tadpole stage entirely, and defends itself with a squeak that made it an internet star.
Overview
The desert rain frog lives only in a narrow coastal band, roughly 10 kilometres wide, between Lüderitz in Namibia and the Olifants River in South Africa. This is dune desert, but it sits beside the cold Atlantic, and almost every night a bank of sea fog rolls in and dampens the sand. The frog’s range is defined precisely by how far that fog reaches.
Living on fog
The frog is nocturnal and fossorial, spending the day buried 10–20 centimetres down in cool, slightly moist sand. At night it emerges to hunt small invertebrates, and it takes up the water it needs by absorbing fog moisture through a patch of belly skin — it rarely, if ever, encounters liquid water. Its webbed toes act as sand-shoes on the loose dune surface.
No tadpoles
There is no pond, so there is no tadpole stage. The female lays a few large, yolky eggs in a humid burrow chamber, and the young develop completely inside the egg, hatching as fully formed froglets — a strategy called direct development.
The face and the squeak
Its round body, blunt downturned mouth, and big forward eyes give it a look of permanent indignation, and when threatened it inflates, rises on its legs, and lets out a long, high, squeaky-toy “war cry.” A 2013 video of this display went viral and remains one of the most-shared wildlife clips online — which has, usefully, raised the frog’s profile.
Status
The desert rain frog is Near Threatened and declining. Its tiny linear range overlaps heavily with coastal diamond mining, and it is also harmed by road building, off-road vehicles, and coastal development, all of which disturb the specific fog-dampened dune habitat it cannot live without.
Desert Rain Frog: common questions
Why does the desert rain frog look so angry?
It is purely a matter of anatomy — the frog is not actually grumpy. Breviceps rain frogs have a very short, blunt head, a downturned mouth, small close-set nostrils, and large protruding eyes set forward on a nearly round body, and to human eyes that combination reads as a permanent scowl or a look of indignation. The impression is heightened when the frog inflates its body as a defence, making it look like a cross, over-stuffed balloon. This appearance, plus the squeaky call, is why it became a popular internet animal.
What is the sound it makes?
When threatened — for example when a photographer's hand approaches — the desert rain frog raises up on its legs, inflates its body, and gives a long, high-pitched, buzzing squeak or "war cry." It is one of the loudest calls relative to body size of any frog and is startlingly like a squeaky toy. A 2013 clip of a frog doing exactly this became one of the first widely shared wildlife videos of the smartphone era and is still frequently reposted.
How does a frog survive in a desert with almost no rain?
It relies on fog, not rain. The coast where it lives is bathed almost nightly in cold, moist sea fog from the Benguela Current, which condenses on the sand. The frog spends the day buried 10 to 20 centimetres down in slightly damp sand and emerges at night to feed, absorbing water directly through a specialised patch of belly skin from the fog-dampened surface. It has webbed feet that work as sand-shoes and never needs standing water. Its whole range is defined by how far inland the fog reaches — roughly a 10-kilometre strip.
Does the desert rain frog have tadpoles?
No. Like other Breviceps frogs it has dispensed with the free-swimming tadpole stage entirely, which makes sense for an animal that lives where there is no pond. The female lays a small clutch of large, yolk-rich eggs in a humid chamber in her burrow, and the embryos complete their whole development — including the tadpole phase — inside the egg capsule, hatching as fully formed miniature frogs. This is called direct development, and it frees the species from any dependence on open water.