Barf Out the Frog Babies

SPEAKER_1 (0:08)

You're listening to Strange by Nature, your guide to the strange, weird, unbelievable and improbable wonders of the natural world.

Kirk Mona (0:23)

Hello, everyone, and thanks for being here today. I'm Kirk Mona, and joining me are Rachel Gimza and Victoria Thompson. We're all naturalists who together have scoured the world for weird and wonderful wonders just to please your mammalian brains desire for novelty. Isn't that nice? Let's do this.

Rachel Gimza (0:43)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the show, everyone. I'm so excited to be here with Kirk and Victoria.

Kirk Mona (0:50)

Hey. That's me.

Rachel Gimza (0:52)

And with all of you lovely listeners.

Kirk Mona (0:57)

Absolutely.

Rachel Gimza (0:58)

So just so you know, this is episode 292 So we're creeping up on 300

Kirk Mona (1:06)

300 And are we doing anything special for episode 300, Rachel?

Rachel Gimza (1:11)

Yeah, we are. We're having our listeners, our lovely listeners, submit just what the podcast meets to them. Just have like a little audio recording.

Victoria Thompson (1:21)

What's your favorite episode or subject? What do you remember?

Kirk Mona (1:25)

Yeah. Tell us who you are, where you're listening from, and maybe a memorable episode from the past 300 that has stuck with you. We would love to hear that, and we're going to hopefully include some of those in our 300 show. But here's the trick.

Rachel Gimza (1:40)

You have to actually send it in. Yeah, we have to have that sent in in order for it to work.

Kirk Mona (1:45)

We don't have any way of extracting that from your brain.

Rachel Gimza (1:48)

How cool would that actually be? No, that's a little scary.

Kirk Mona (1:51)

No, that would not be horrifying, actually, Rachel. No, I don't like that.

Rachel Gimza (1:55)

Never mind, never mind. That's like what? Like, cyber...

Kirk Mona (2:01)

Wind that one back, yep.

Rachel Gimza (2:02)

Yeah.

Cyber network or whatever it is? No. I'm thinking Doctor Who. We're not Doctor Who villains here.

Victoria Thompson (2:10)

Okay. I see.

Kirk Mona (2:12)

Okay. I was just going to let that play out and see where your brain got eventually.

Rachel Gimza (2:18)

The cyber... What are they called?

Kirk Mona (2:20)

The Cybermen. Oh my God.

Rachel Gimza (2:23)

Cybermen. It's been a long day, y'all. I'm very excited.

Kirk Mona (2:26)

I'm taking away your knit scarf.

Rachel Gimza (2:32)

It's so good though.

Anyway, so what do you got for us, Rachel? I am starting us off this week. I hope all of you do send in some of your little notes. We would love to hear it. So I've got a doozy for y'all. So I'm going to premise this with the fact that I am talking about an extinct species of frog.

Victoria Thompson (3:06)

Okay, all right.

Rachel Gimza (3:06)

So this does not exist at this point in time. However, and it is coming from our lovely, our favorite, it ever gives the strange and wonderful Australia.

Victoria Thompson (3:24)

The land of Oz. There it is. Okay.

Rachel Gimza (3:26)

Who would have thought? So it comes from our lovely, amazing Australia, and actually the eastern edge of Australia even, which is part of the reason why it is no longer with us.

Officially, it was last seen in the wild in 1983

Victoria Thompson (3:49)

Okay.

Rachel Gimza (3:51)

But was officially declared extinct in 2006 And then the north, that was the southern version of this. And then, I'm not telling you the name because it gives it away.

Kirk Mona (4:03)

Okay.

Rachel Gimza (4:03)

The northern version of this was seen in 1987, but was more recently declared extinct in 2015 I say recently because in my brain, 2013, that was like-

Kirk Mona (4:15)

A couple years ago.

Rachel Gimza (4:16)

That was not that long ago. That was just before I met both of you, actually.

Kirk Mona (4:20)

Right. Right.

Rachel Gimza (4:21)

So I'm like, that wasn't that long ago. That was more than 10 years ago.

Kirk Mona (4:28)

Yeah.

Rachel Gimza (4:29)

It's fine. So it's fine. So this particular species of frog, it lived in Queensland. It was a ground dweller, so it just hung out on the ground. It was not up in the trees or any such thing. Kind of think like a toad or like a leopard frog or something along those lines. They stuck around creek systems, they hung around in the rainforests.

That's mostly where they like to be, which makes a lot of sense. That's where we tend to find frogs, right?

Kirk Mona (5:05)

Sure. Yeah.

Rachel Gimza (5:08)

They weren't especially cool looking. The species name for the southern version, and I'll get to the northern version, was Braeobactrachus silus.