Malaysia Wallace's Flying Frog

Wallace's Flying Frog
Rhacophorus nigropalmatus

The Wallace's flying frog experiences a dramatic change in colouration from a dull tadpole to the reddish orange froglet pictured here before becoming a completely green adult with yellow webs.

Amphibians ~ Tree Frogs ~ Wallace's Flying Frog

The Wallace's flying frog (Rhacophorus nigropalmatus) is an astoundingly beautiful and large species of arboreal frog. Wallace's flying frogs are bright green with a white belly, their feet extensively webbed with yellow toes and skin flaps. This enables them to glide for considerable distances (up to 50 m) from treetop to treetop in the jungle canopy. The inner areas of the webbed feet between each toe are black.

The eyes are large, round and horizontal. Peninsular Malaysia specimens usually have a pair of small white spots on top of each thigh. While it is widely distributed across the Peninsular, Borneo and Sumatra, it is not glimpsed often, except during times of heavy rain, when it comes to the ground.

Wallace's flying frogs build foam nests around pools with tadpoles that hatch and drop directly in the water. Over a period of several months, they undergo a dramatic ontogenic change of colour. Tadpoles have a dull colouration but slowly develop yellow hues as they grow in size. At the froglet stage and out of the water, they are strikingly patterned with reddish orange hues and mixed with whitish blotches across the legs and flanks.

Eventually, they will grow into the huge green flying frogs that researchers and ecologists love so much.