Rheobatrachus vitellinus -- Northern Gastric Brooding Frog

The Northern Gastric Brooding Frog lived exclusively in the Eungella Range's rainforests, west of Mackay, in Queensland Australia. These amazing frogs could actually shut down their gastric juices while rearing their young inside their stomachs! They therefore held great promise for advances in human medicine, as research on these frogs may have resulted in a cure for peptic ulcers, which affect 25 million people in the United States alone. Unfortunately, the gastric-brooding frogs vanished within a few years of being discovered by scientists. The health of humans and frogs is clearly intertwined.

Photo by M. Davies
Text by Kerry Kriger