Litoria mira is a new species of Australian tree frogs. The scientists who discovered it found an uncanny resemblance to the chocolate frog from Harry Potter!
All about the Harry Potter chocolate frog discovery
Steve Richards, an Australian researcher first discovered it in 2016 and ran genetic tests to confirm. The chocolate-colored amphibians turned out to be a new undiscovered species. Richards is a frog specialist at the South Australian Museum and publicized his discovery in the Australian Journal of Zoology last week.
Members of Litoria mira live in the rainforests of New Guinea. The frogs got this name due to their unique appearance. The scientist found them to be surprising and, this played an important player in naming them. Mirum means strange or surprised in Latin. Litoria is an Australian tree frog genus.
The historical connection
Litoria cerulean, the chocolate frog in New Guinea is a close relative of the Australian green tree frog. They look very similar except for their skin colors. But, New Guinea and Australia are about 1000 miles apart and separated by the ocean.
So, how can they be close?
That’s because the two islands were together until 2.6 million years ago, in the Pliocene period (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago).
“Resolving the biotic interchange between these two regions is critical to understanding how the rainforest and savannah habitat types have expanded and contracted over time of both,” said Paul Oliver from the Queensland Museum. “Estimates for the divergence of the new species in our study show that in the Pliocene there was still connectivity between the two species across lowland tropical habitats of northern Australia and New Guinea,” he added.
Moreover, this is not the first time animals got their names inspired by Harry Potter characters due to their resemblance. There are 12 others including, a wasp named after dementors, a spider that looks like the sorting hat, a crab named after Harry Potter, and Professor Snape. to name a few.