Rainbow Toad Spotted After 87 Years

An adult female of the Borneo rainbow toad, spanning just 2 inches (51 mm) in length, hadn't been spotted for 87 years.
CREDIT: © Indraneil Das via LiveScience

Wow!! What an amazing little toad. So breathtakingly beautiful one can only marvel that this tiny trooper has survived after being thought extinct for 87 years.

After months of scouring remote forests in Borneo, researchers spotted three rainbow toads up a tree, snapping the first-ever photographs of this elusive amphibian species that hadn't been seen for 87 years, scientists announced.

Last seen in 1924, the Bornean rainbow toad (Ansonia latidisca) had been listed as one of the world's top 10 most wanted lost frogs, or those that hadn't been seen in at least a decade. Conservation scientists thought the chances of spotting the spindly-legged toad were slim.

In fact, until this rediscovery, scientists had only seen illustrations of the mysterious and long-legged toad existed, after collection by European explorers in the 1920s.

Via LiveScience