Just over an inch long, with an eardrum nearly as wide as its eye — a frog new to science in Vietnam

On the Langbian Plateau in southern Vietnam, scientists have given a name to a frog nobody had described before. Odorrana chumu is tiny — adult males measure about 3 centimetres (just over an inch) from nose to tail, the smallest average size of all 71 known species in its family group — yet its eardrum is enormous for its size, nearly as wide as its eye, and its iris carries a coppery band. A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, the Australian Museum and partner universities found six males at night, sitting on rocks and leaves beside a forest stream in Dak Lak Province, and confirmed the new species by comparing body measurements and DNA. The plateau, they say, almost certainly hides more frogs like it — and naming this one is a first step toward protecting the forest it lives in.