Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. I hope you find this one to be toad-ally un-frog-ettable.
There’s a genus of tiny microhylid frogs called Mini, and all species under it are wordplay about being small.
If you gave me a blank canvas and said, “Draw me a picture,” I could deliver you approximately four things.
One would be a sun with sunglasses. If I didn’t have any color at my disposal, it might look more like a spider with sunglasses. In any case, it’d be very cool.
The second option would be a Pac-Man. We could go the classic route of just a pizza shape with a slice cut out of it and an eye, but I find it more fun to add accoutrements, such as a bow, a goatee, an angry eyebrow, and a long lizard tongue.
The third thing is a cube. I’d draw one square, another square where half of it is in the first one, and then some lines to connect the two. Voilà, it’s (almost) a perfect cube!
My final drawing is that of a frog. I took the basic design of this frog from Ed Emberley. He has a series of books that teach you how to draw just about anything. Clearly, the only thing I’ve retained is a frog.
I’ve never clarified what type of frog it is, but I think I’m going to start referring to it as a tiny microhylid frog.
Why? Because I love wordplay, and this frog is ribbiting with its punnery.
A brief break in the frogs to give a shout out to Fun Fact Friyay subscriber Helene, who just celebrated a very hoppy birthday! (In the frog sense, not the IPA sense.) One fun fact about Helene is that she is an ice cream enthusiast (or perhaps savant?). Between a good solid cone and an evening popsicle, she averages one frozen treat per day. What excellent taste.
In 2019, Mark Scherz, a herpetologist and evolutionary biologist who primarily studies reptiles in Madagascar, discovered a new genus of frog. These frogs are a robust 0.31 to 0.45 inches in snout to vent length. In other words, they are tiny.
Or, as Scherz so eloquently described them, they’re Mini. This variant of frog lives among leaf litter in the forests. Each species is a play off Mini:
Mini ature
Mini mum
Mini scule
Scherz highlighted that these are “REALLY REALLY SMALL FROGS,” close to being the smallest in the world. But interestingly enough, these REALLY REALLY SMALL FROGS are “sister to the largest members of their family,” the Plethodontohyla inguinalis.
Unfortunately, two of these frogs are critically endangered, while Mini ature is data-deficient and can’t definitively say it’s also endangered.
Researchers and conservationists are doing their part to try and stabilize the population across Madagascar.
In the meantime, here are several pictures of Mini frogs, including a few on human thumbnails for scale. They are, in fact, REALLY REALLY SMALL FROGS.
One other shout-out, unrelated to frogs: Lex Roman, the mind behind Revenue Rulebreaker (and many other fantastic resources for small businesses and independent creators), has launched the Legends Book Fair.
If you’re in Lex’s circle, you’re a Legend. And being a Legend comes with all kinds of fun perks. Among them, multiple events per year, including virtual meet-n-greets that feature a live musician in between sessions. You ain’t finding that on your typical Zoom call!
I was delighted to see my book Kind, But Kind of Weird: Short Stories on Life’s Relationships on the digital bookshelf. It is but one of MANY good reads on there, so if you need a page-turner, I highly recommend checking out the book fair. It’s neatly organized by genre/style, as well, which is just a delight.
However many pages of a book you read this weekend, I hope your mind wanders and your papercuts are non-existent. Unless you listen to the Linkin Park song “Papercut.” In that case, I hope your papercut lasts for about three minutes.