The dark, wet rainforests of Borneo provide the perfect habitat for amphibians. The problem for an amphibian fanatic and photographer like me is finding them in these huge, dense jungles. The search becomes even more difficult when the frog that you are looking for is one of the smallest frogs on the planet – The Bornean Chorus Frog (Microhyla nepenthicola), or Bornean Narrow-mouthed Frog.

I had chosen the rainforests of the Malaysian state of Sarawak to search for the little frog, setting off into Kubah National Park. Kubah is renowned as a frog paradise. Having hired a guide, we set off into the forest after dark. I’m not one for creating lists of things that I want to see, preferring instead to enjoy the experience of exploring, and be grateful for any rewards that come along with it. That said, having seen photographs of this particular frog on the website of renowned Borneo photographer Chien C. Lee, nepenthicola was very much on my mind.

The forest was comparatively dry on that first night walk. Squinting into the torchlight, many weird and wonderful creatures came into focus, but my tiny target remained elusive.

The next morning was wet when I set off for Permai for a day walk in search of monkeys and perhaps a snake or lizard. The walk was long, a little more arduous than planned, and humid. Towards the end of the walk, I was feeling a little discouraged by the lack of clear wildlife sightings versus the effort put into the hike. As my heavy boots clumped along the trail I saw something hop. Was it another cricket? Maybe just a stone pinged up by my boot? No, it was neither – my eyes settled on something tiny and shiny. I knelt and snapped a shot of a tiny frog. One shot before the little amphibian fired like a bullet into the undergrowth. I zoomed in on the photograph, and sure enough it was my first sighting of the Bornean Chorus Frog!

The rain had fallen steadily ahead of my next Kubah National Park night walk. The park was transformed with the sound of frog song. We could hear nepenthicola calling, but getting eyes on this crumb of a frog in the leaf litter was proving challenging. Luckily, a fat female decided to cross the forest road right in front of me. I couldn’t believe how high and how far each hop was. The little jumping bean fired up in the air for what looked like a scale-adjusted hop over the Empire State Building. She landed on leaf litter against a small fallen branch. I gently tipped the branch to one side and fired off some shots before she continued on her way.

The next nepenthicola was a frog about a third of the size. I believe this was a little male. I had seen one that looked much the same croaking on a leaf a little earlier, but it was too fast for a portrait shot. This one bounced up from the track, landing on a log where he could actually be seen and photographed clearly.

While this species of chorus frog is attractive, if you like that sort of thing, you might wonder why I had a particular interest in seeing it. What is special about a little brown frog? Well, this little brown frog has a secret lifestyle. If you are going to be tiny, soft and potentially a tasty meal for just about everything in the jungle then you had better have some tricks to keep your species alive. Nepenthicola’s trick is its breeding habit. Rather than risking the hazards of the big pond, nepenthicola has learned to utilize the tiny pools that form in a pitcher plant with which it shares its name – Flask-shaped Pitcher Plant (Nepenthes ampullaria).

Bob, my guide, found a patch of pitcher plants and we took some time to study the tops of the small green flasks in the hope of spotting a frog. Unfortunately, there were no frogs to be seen. We peered inside the golf ball-sized plants and tapped the side. As the tap disturbed the little ponds inside, there was a movement. Tadpole! Drifting into the centre of the flask was a tiny tadpole, complete with back legs, and little front legs waiting to break through. This is what I had wanted to see. We pressed a torch to the outside of the plant wall and I focused my camera. It took several shots until I finally got the photograph that I wanted. A tadpole going through its lifecycle in the relative safety of a pond the size of a shot glass.

I say “relative safety” because Nature always finds a way to restore and maintain balance. We didn’t find an adult frog at the pitchers, but we did find that we had company in the search for frogs. A tiny Red-bellied keelback snake was waiting patiently at the mouth of a pitcher flask for a small, soft, juicy treat. It is a jungle out there!

Not only had I found the little frog that I had wanted to see, but I had also seen the tadpoles and a bonus predatory snake lying in wait. The forest had allowed me to have a peep into the circle of life for one of the many unique inhabitants of her microscopic world.

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Categories: AsiaTags: Amphibians, animals, Borneo, Frogs, herping, malaysia, Nature, Travel, wildlife