Meet Helen’s Flying Frog (Rhacophorus helenae). A huge, green,
“flying” frog that, up until now, was completely unknown to
science. At first it may seem strange that such a fantastic and
obvious frog (up to almost 10 cm body length) could escape
discovery until now, less than 100 km from an urban centre with
over 9 million people. But these frogs are called Flying Frogs
for a reason, and it’s their arboreal nature that likely kept
them out of view from biologists for so long. The term “Flying
Frog” is used to describe many frogs in the genus Rhacophorus,
but Helen’s Flying Frog belongs to the group of frogs that have
the greatest ability glide. Armed with large hands and feet that
are fully webbed, and even having flaps of webbing on the
outside of their arms, Helen’s Tree Frog is able glide
gracefully down from trees to breed in forest pools, and
probably even glide from tree to tree. Because they likely spend
most of the time in the forest canopy, they’ve remained largely
out of sight. To date, Helen’s Tree