One might have thought that every animal living in a city with 8 million people would have been noticed. And it had been, but a suggestion that there was a new frog in town 80 years ago had been dismissed. So Dr. Jeremy Feinberg of Rutgers University and his team could safely make a splash by announcing this week the discovery of Rana kauffeldi in the heart of New York, and to be fair, in New Jersey and surrounding wetlands as well.
Put otherwise, this new leopard frog is evidently related to other leopard frogs, it's just not clear how. They could be genetically rather distant, or practically kissing cousins. Possibly one day that will be elucidated – or maybe not. Frogs are notoriously sensitive to changes in climate and pollution, and have been declining in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
Confusion over leopard frogs is quite the North American tradition, it would seem. For centuries zoologists have been fighting over the classification of the froggy crowd, including because of "changing species concepts" across those long years.
What the ****, I could have been famous for this ****? I've literally caught dozens and dozens of these frogs for fun when I was younger, no ****ing joke, and now they're a "new species" ****ing ****. (Yes I let them go, I'd just hold them for a few minutes)
I don't get it. I live on a small tropical island, and this is the most common frog here. But I guess there must be a different attribute to the one in the OP for it to be a new species. OR, it was here all along and no one knew it was un-discovered by science yet. Crazy.
