Mountain Chicken Frog

Leptodactylus fallax, commonly called the mountain chicken or giant ditch frog, is a critically endangered amphibian in the family Leptodactylidae, native to the Caribbean islands of Dominica and Montserrat and named for being hunted and eaten as a local delicacy. It is among the largest frogs in the world, reaching up to one kilogram in weight and twenty two centimetres in snout to vent length, with adults typically eighteen centimetres long, chestnut brown upperparts that may be barred or spotted, orange yellow sides, pale yellow underparts, a dark outlined skin fold running from head to groin, and large golden irised eyes; males carry black thumb spurs used during mating. Once widespread across the Lesser Antilles, it now survives only on Dominica and Montserrat, inhabiting moist forests, ravines and river valleys near streams and springs at lower altitudes. Its population fell more than eighty percent between 1995 and 2004, and by 2017 to 2019 fewer than two hundred individuals remained on Dominica with almost none left in the wild on Montserrat, driven mainly by chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease introduced to the islands around 2002.