Lungless frog found in Indonesia

A frog has been found in a remote part of Indonesia that has no lungs and breathes through its skin, a discovery that researchers said Thursday could provide insight into what drives evolution in certain species. ¶ The aquatic frog Barbourula kalimantanensis was found in Indonesia's Kalimantan Province on Borneo island in August 2007, said David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore. He co-authored a paper on the find in this week's edition of the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology. ¶ Bickford says the species is the first frog known to science without lungs and joins a short list of amphibians with this trait. ¶ He surmised that the frog had evolved to adapt to its surroundings, in which it has to navigate cold, rapidly moving streams that are rich in oxygen. ¶ "These are about the most ancient and bizarre frogs you can get on the planet," he said of the brown amphibian with a tendency to flatten itself as it glides across the water. "They are like a squished version of Jabba the Hutt." ASSOCIATED PRESS