Scientists have been left stumped after discovering a frog with a small mushroom growing from its leg in India.
It’s the first-ever of its kind where a mushroom has been seen growing on live animal tissue, researchers linked to the World Wildlife Fund say.
Images show the amphibian with a mushroom growing near its hind leg, but was not captured to be able to be studied further.
The frog, Hylarana intermedia, or the Rao’s intermediate golden-backed frog, is native to the lush foothills of India’s Western Ghats.
Fungus experts identified the growth as a Bonnet Mushroom, known to found on rotting wood.
There have been cases of microbes and bacteria or fungi growing with organisms, but they’ve mostly been benign or symbiotic. But some can cause infections in some instances, such as fungi related to athlete’s foot or yeast infections.
However, mushrooms growing on a living organism hasn’t been documented before, according to the study published in the journal Reptiles and Amphibians.
Researches said: “To the best of our knowledge, never has a mushroom sprouting from the flank of a live frog been documented.”
It’s believed because mushrooms require nutrients not found on the skin of animals, it’s unprecedented.
However, as the creature wasn’t captured, whether the mushroom was infectious and how far it penetrated the skin remains unknown.
It has sparked concern after frogs and hundreds of other amphibian species are currently under threat by a parasitic fungus named Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or the chytrid fungus. Chytrid infections have caused a decline of amphibian populations around the world. They throw off the water and salt balance on the skin on the animals which lead to heart failure.
