A rather adorable Eastern Narrowmouth Toad

Look at those eyes! Such a cutie..

How adorable! So small and chubby. :)

Gastrophrynes carolinensis or the Eastern Narrowmouth Toad was a very exciting find on our lab field trip last week to Francis Marion National Forest. This very cute and very unique frog is a member of the Family Microhylidae though it is the family with the most genera (60+), only two genera represented in the US Gastrophryne and Hypopachus, and there is only one species represented in SC..the one we found :P.

This is considered to be a lucky find, because these frogs like to stay close to a body of water and hidden under foliage and fallen logs, which is exactly why we probably found it because there seemed to be ample small ponds, moist ground, and fallen debris all over the trail we scoured. 

These frogs do have a biphasic life cycle with aquatic larvae, and since we found it in it’s breeding season (March-October), is probably why we found it near a small pool of water, since they stay hidden until optimal conditions for breeding usually when there is high humidity and lots of rain. 

We were unable to conclusively identify the frog we found as a male or female, though we have suspicions that it was an adult male do to its size. The frog was approximately 1 ½ to 2 inches, which is smaller than most females. 

He seemed very anxious while we were holding him and attempted to hop away many times, so we didn’t hold on to him for too long (though probably because he was so identifiable and it didn’t take us a while to identify him...)