While I was in service as an academician, I had the opportunity to visit rural areas of India and many countries. Thus, could see many flora and fauna including many varieties of frogs. But the frog which I observed on June 11, 2023, at my residence in Hyderabad with the scientific name Polypedates maculatus, locally known as the Indian tree frog first time seen in my life. This frog happily is living on the edge of the bucket (photograph inserted) in my residence of Libdom villas (Raj Reddy Valley). It is pertinent to mention that Libdom Villas (Raj Reddy Valley) is located at Bandlaguda Jagir, a gated community spread over to an area of 17 acres of land having all facilities like indoor and outdoor games, gym, park, swimming pool, function hall, cafeteria, saloon, etc. The villas are of different sizes and sizes below a minimum of 150 square yards of land and a maximum of 300 square yards. But 84 percent of villas are in the range of 150 to 200 square yards of land. Altogether, 190 villas are available in the gated community and the residents are from across the country representing mini-India and also belonging to different castes and religions, a unique case of national integration. Anyway, regarding the frogs a few lines I wish to highlight here, according to the website, www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/frog-fact-sheet/, “there are over 5,000 species of known frogs, and scientists continue to discover new species. Frog species come in a variety of sizes and colours. They can be found in a variety of habitats on every continent except Antarctica. Frogs are amphibians, which are cold-blooded vertebrates, meaning they have backbones, that don’t have scales. Amphibians live both on land and in water. Other amphibians include salamander, newt, and caecilian”. “The Polypedates maculatus, the Indian tree frog, is a common species of tree frog found in South Asia as described by John Edward Gray in 1830. These frogs measure about 7–8 cm in body length. They are mostly brownish, yellowish, greyish, or whitish above, with darker spots or markings, rarely with an hourglass-shaped figure on the back of the head and the front of the back. The loreal and temporal regions are dark; there is a light line on the upper lip. The hind side of the thighs has round, yellow spots, which are usually separated by a dark-brown or purplish network. The skin is smooth above, and granulated on the belly and under the thighs; a fold extends from the eye to the shoulder. Males have internal vocal sacs” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypedates_maculatus). I as a senior citizen had the opportunity to see this frog first time in my life so for the benefit of readers sharing a few pieces of information with a photograph.
(I wish to mention that Dr. Saibal Sen Gupta (former Principal of Arya Vidyapeeth College, Guwahati, Assam, Ph.D. in Zoology and an erudite scholar helped me to generate the article).
Prof Shankar Chatterjee, Hyderabad
