Pumpkin Toadlet: Neither Pumpkin, Nor Toad

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Being small has its advantages - and some limitations. One organism that intimately knows the pros and cons of being mini is the pumpkin toadlet.

As an adult, the animal reaches merely the size of a chickpea. At that scale, the frog's inner ear is so small, it's not fully functional. That means the frog's movements seem haphazard. Today, with the help of Atlantic science writer Katie Wu, we investigate: If a frog can't jump well, is it still a frog? (encore)

Read Katie Wu's piece in The Atlantic, A Frog So Small, It Could Not Frog.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Burley.
0:01.2	Hey, Marge. How are you?
0:02.9	I'm good. Actually, I'm great because today I'm going to bring you my favorite episode
0:10.0	from this past year.
0:11.4	Okay, fun. And with so much less light and winter, we could really all use some joy.
0:16.9	So true. And that, Burley, is why I want to tell you about the pumpkin toadlet.
0:23.9	Okay, I remember this episode about this little toad.
0:27.6	Toadlet, Burley. Toadlet. Toadlet. Toadlet, toadlet.
0:31.0	Basically, it's like this little orange skittlesized frog.
0:35.8	They're super adorable. Yeah. But because they're so small, they like can't jump like all the other
0:41.6	frogs. It's kind of sad. Did they lose their frog card?
0:45.4	You're not the only one wondering about that, actually. Aaron Scott gets into it with
0:50.4	Atlantic writer Katie Wu, who wrote all about them. And basically, because there's so many,
0:55.6	they actually have some surprise advantages up there, little froggy sleeps.
1:00.3	Sometimes our weaknesses can be strengths too, I guess.
1:02.9	Mars, it's like Loki, a great note to end 2022.
1:07.2	Agreed. I think these are Loki, one of my favorite animals now. And I just had to share some
1:14.4	of this miniature joy with you. I can't wait. And dear listeners, if you have not
1:20.8	looked up a picture of these toadlets, do yourself a favor. They are little bundles of cuteness.
1:27.0	Cute. You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
1:38.8	In the cloud forests of the mountains of Brazil, on the rainforest floor,
1:43.0	there lives an itty bitty orange critter called the pumpkin toadlet.
	...

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