Breathtaking new frog surprise Photo by David Bickford. The
discovery that this rare frog, living in Borneo, has no lungs,
is being used to promote evolution. But as the article shows,
this is off the mark. Making headlines is an amazing discovery
about a unique species of frog. The amphibian is described as
‘bizarre’, a fitting epithet given that it is missing lungs
altogether (the wordplay in the title is intentional).1 The 5 cm
(2 inch) long Barbourula kalimantanensis lives in the jungles of
Borneo, and apparently gets all the oxygen it needs through its
skin. It was first known about some 30 years ago, but being very
rare, only one other specimen has been discovered to date, and
neither was dissected. Some of the media descriptions associate
the frog with the word ‘primitive’, a term loaded with
evolutionary connotations. But is it somehow an intermediate, a
form closer to some ancestor that had not evolved lungs yet? Not
at all; even most informed evolutionists would agree with the
conclusion that it is