White's Tree Frog

🌍 Overview

White's tree frog - also called the dumpy tree frog or Australian green tree frog - is a large, robust arboreal frog native to Australia and southern New Guinea. They are one of the most docile frog species, remarkably tolerant of handling compared to most amphibians, and have become the most popular pet frog worldwide. Their characteristic "dopey" expression comes from a large, overhanging parotoid gland above the eye. Their skin secretions contain compounds with antimicrobial and antiviral properties.

📋 Quick Facts

📜 History

The species was the first Australian frog to be described scientifically. John White, a surgeon and naturalist, published it in 1790 in his Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales as Rana caerulea, Latin for blue, because the preserved specimens he shipped to England had turned that color: the frog's green comes from a blue pigment under a yellow layer, and the preservative destroyed the yellow. The type specimen passed into Sir Joseph Banks's collection and was destroyed when the Hunterian Museum in London was bombed during the Second World War. The misleading name has stuck through every later change of genus.

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