Unknown Bush Frog – Philautus sp. of Kalimantan / Borneo – around 1300m ASL

It doesn’t happen often anymore that I see frogs in Borneo that I’ve never seen before, and it happens even less often that I have no idea what I’m looking at – which is what happened about two weeks ago. I had climbed a peak once again and was surveying the fauna there at night when suddenly I noticed this frog that I couldn’t identify at all – I mean, clearly it’s a Philautus, but the species couldn’t be narrowed down at all. At first, I thought it was P. bunitus, but morphologically this doesn’t fit. Friends of mine said, based on the pictures, that it looks more like a P. kerangae – but I know the P. kerangae population from this area and they look completely different. I climbed the summit several times in the following weeks but couldn’t find this species again. So it remains a mystery for now, but of course I will come back and collect samples to find out what I found here using DNA.

It remains exciting!