Earlier this month, a Twitter user posted pictures of a “rare creature” with an impossibly round, blob-like body and a duly expressive face. Since then, it has been retweeted, liked, and shared thousands of times, amidst many varied reactions. But the most common one of all has been to wonder what it is exactly.
Many have speculated that it is a shell-less turtle, while others joke that it is the evolutionary ancestor of Jabba the Hutt. But Twitter user Jodi Rowley, a “conservation biologist obsessed with frogs,” came forward and cleared the air. She confirmed that the bulbous creature is, in fact, a species of frog known as the Blunt-headed Burrowing Frog or Glyphoglossus molossus. And the reason it’s so fat and puffy is that it is inflating itself with air in self-defense so it appears large and threatening.
Still, there are a few people who remain in disbelief, questioning the existence of any such “creature” at all. However, with an estimated 8.7 million species of plants and animals on the planet—and only a small fraction of them discovered and identified so far—almost anything is possible.
This amazing frog is so big that it has baffled all of Twitter! Many people even questioned its existence.
However, one person identified it as a Blunt-headed Burrowing Frog that is puffing itself up for protection.