The purple frog, Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis (2003)

Phylum : Chordata Class : Amphibia Order : Anura Family : Sooglossidae Genus : Nasikabatrachus Species : N. sahyadrensis

The species was described from specimens collected in the Idukki district of Kerala by S.D. Biju from the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute in Palode, India and Franky Bossuyt from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels), in 2003. However, it was already well known to the local people and several earlier documented specimens and publications had been ignored by the authors in the 2003 paper that describes the genus and species.

The body of Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis appears robust and bloated and is relatively rounded compared to other more dorsoventrally-flattened frogs. Its arms and legs splay out in the standard anuran body form. Compared to other frogs, N. sahyadrensis has a small head and an unusual, pointed snout. Adults are typically dark purplish-grey in color. Males are about a third of the length of females. The specimen with which the species was originally described was seven centimeters long from the tip of the snout to the vent. Tadpoles of the species had been described in 1917 by Nelson Annandale and C. R. Narayan Rao as having oral suckers that allowed them to live in torrential streams. Suckers are also present in rheophilic fishes of genera such as Glyptothorax, Travancoria, Homaloptera and Bhavania, adaptations that are the result of convergent evolution. Some of these fishes co-occur with Nasikabatrachus tadpoles in the hill streams.