Transcription
Foreign. [Music]
Y night, a male frog calls out to a female. He's invisible, calling from an underground burrow. In Hindu mythology, the Demon King Mahabali emerges once a year from Patala, or the underground, to meet his citizens. In Kerala, in Southern India, this day is celebrated as the Festival of Onam. Like Mahabali, this frog also emerges once a year during the first heavy rain of the monsoon, just for a few hours. Meet the Mahabali Frog.
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With a rotund, pig-like snout and smooth purple skin, the purple frog is an odd-looking curiosity. This frog is an enigma. What we know about it is limited to the brief visit it makes for a few hours above ground. Its life underground is a mystery. The purple frog, scientifically known as Nasika batrachus, "Nasika" means nose, "batrachus" means frog, and "sahyadriensis" comes from their distribution, which is in the Western Ghats. All its genetic relatives are a group of frogs called Zooglossids, which are found in the islands of Seychelles. Amphibians who can't tolerate solidity, and this genetic relationship makes the species a living evidence of the Gondwana hypothesis. The Gondwana Land hypothesis argues that about 180 million years ago, an ancient supercontinent in the Southern Hemisphere split up to form the present-day South America, Africa, Seychelles, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica. According to Dr. Das, the fact that the purple frog's closest living relatives are only found over 2800 kilometers away in Seychelles is living proof that all continents were once joined.
Once the male has the female's attention, they mate in the tunnel and emerge together from their hideout. The much larger female carries the male on her back, braving water currents and heavy rain to the egg-laying site, a crevice in the bed of a seasonal stream. While the female lays up to 2000 to 4000 eggs, the male releases sperm over the clutch to fertilize it. Soon, the couple returns to their underground burrow, where they stay for another year. No wonder so little is known of these creatures. It was only in 2003 it was formally described, but it is known to indigenous people and people living in the forest since a long time. And in fact, in some places, they had different names for both the sexes. So, in some places, the male is called Padal and the female is called Padayal. There are several names in different areas of its distribution.
Das's observations show that the purple frogs are largely found in forests that lie outside sanctuaries and national parks that have legal protection status. And the fact that so little is known about them makes their conservation extremely challenging. Dr. Das feels the first step towards protecting purple frogs is to make them popular. "The conservation of a species, it should be known by everyone." In that particular aspect, we thought about like how to make this animal popular and all, and that's when we realized that we could possibly, or we could actually compare the species with the legendary mythological character King Mahabali. And we started like social media campaigns and awareness talks, workshops, classes, and everything. And this kind of helped us in getting the species popular.
Frog pairs' one day journey is filled with dangers. They must travel through a disturbed habitat and navigate roads with speeding vehicles, all under torrential rains. Many are killed. Others fall prey to owls and snakes, particularly the Brown Fish Owl and the Checkered Keelback.
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Back in the stream, the fertilized eggs also face many challenges. Some get washed away in the torrential streams, while predators devour others.
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Those that survive hatch into tadpoles in about a week.
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The tadpole's mouth, adapted to sucking, clings to rocks even during fast currents to suck out algae.
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In 100 to 150 days, the tadpoles metamorphose, and a new generation of purple frogs is ready to go underground and build their secret home.
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