Cape Rain Frog

Fascinating facts about the Cape Rain Frog

• In 1758 Carl Linnaeus gave this frog its first scientific name, making it the earliest African frog ever described. That same year the world learned of a creature that would later become the most common and largest rain frog in South Africa.
• A single adult can reach about 45 mm (just under 2 inches or 4.5 cm) – roughly the length of a thumb – yet its body is so rounded that it looks more like a tiny, squishy ball than a typical frog.
• When it feels threatened, the frog swallows air and puffs up, earning it the Afrikaans nickname "blaasoppie" (inflated toad).
• Mating pairs stick together thanks to glue-like secretions from special glands on the male’s chest and the female’s back. The female actually has more of these adhesive glands, ensuring the tiny male stays attached during the underground fertilization of about 22 eggs.
• Unlike most amphibians, this species never needs open water; it lays its eggs in a moist burrow and the young skip the tadpole stage entirely, emerging as tiny froglets ready to hunt worms and termites.

At a glance

About the Cape Rain Frog

The Cape rain frog (Breviceps gibbosus) is a stout, earth-colored amphibian that scarcely exceeds 45 mm in length, its brown skin speckled with a delicate white dotted pattern on the belly. Forward-facing eyes sit above a narrow, mouth-like snout, and its short, muscular limbs lack webbing, giving it a rounded, almost toad-like silhouette. Females are noticeably larger than males, a dimorphism that echoes the species’ unique reproductive strategy: males possess adhesive glands on their pectoral region, while females sport a richer array of the same glands on their dorsum, secreting a glue-like fluid that binds the pair together during amplexus. When rain clouds gather over the fynbos of South Africa’s far southwestern Cape, from the urban fringe of Cape Town up to Citrusdal, these secretive frogs emerge from burrows they excavate backward, scooping sand to seal themselves underground. Their calls are a series of brief, squawking intervals that echo from beneath vegetation or within the safety of their tunnels, guiding females to the hidden nests where roughly 22 eggs are laid in moist jelly capsules, bypassing the tadpole stage entirely. They feed opportunistically on worms, termites, and other small insects, and when threatened they inflate their bodies with air, a puffed-up display that earned them the Afrikaans name blaasoppie, and emit a sharp chirp before retreating to the safety of their burrow.

More other animals to discover

Browse Feravox