Hairy Frog Facts

Hairy Frog Profile

In 1987, Daniel Postgate published an excellent poem about a hairy toe, found by a woman picking beans. Toes shouldn’t be hairy, nor should they be separate from feet, and this is the essence of the discomfort the poem so skilfully evokes.

We’ve written about the hairy frogfish before – another thing that shouldn’t be hairy. But somehow, it was a relief that it’s a fish and not an actual frog. Sadly, that relief has expired because now we have to talk about an actual hairy frog. 

Hairy Frog Facts Overview

Habitat:	Forest, wetlands and agricultural areas
Location:	West Africa
Lifespan:	Not listed
Size:	8–13 cm (3–5 in) long
Weight:	Up to around 150 g (5 oz)
Colour:	Dark to light brown, mottled
Diet:	Arthropods and other invertebrates
Predators:	Humans, possibly birds, small mammals
Top Speed:	Standard frog speed
No. of Species:	1
Conservation Status:	Least Concern

It’s a great skill of Mother Nature to make something you had no intention of eating anyway somehow substantially less palatable.

The hairy frog is just as you’d expect, and this makes mammals – animals that are supposed to be hairy – uncomfortable in the same way that a human covered in mucous does. 

But people do eat them. And Hairy frogs have a lot more going for them still, with retractable “claws” fantastic regenerative capabilities, and offspring that resemble the malevolent carnivorous extra-terrestrials in the documentary Critters.

Interesting Hairy Frog Facts

1. Big hairy frogs

This poor creature is the personification of that old joke about the Irish Bartender. Sure, it’s the maned antithesis of Baby Shark, but it has a bunch of other cool things about it, too. Yet, the hairs are hard to ignore, and this has lent the unfortunate amphibian a bit of a reputation. 

It’s a member of an African family of frogs, closely related to the continent’s reed frogs. This family contains various tree frog species, as well as a group known as the “breeding squeakers”, named after those shameless neighbours you hear through the wall in the middle of the day when your mum’s over for lunch.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a single hair on either of these, but one genus within this family rejects modern beauty standards and has become notorious for it.  

The scientific name for the genus, Trichobatrachus, is a little on the nose. The “hairy” prefix Trich- shows up in various unpleasant contexts such as the parasitic nematode Trichinella or the pesky green mould that plagues mushroom growers and bread keepers: Trichoderma. The former translates to “small hair” and the latter “hairy skin”. 

The second part of the frog’s name shows up a lot in fish taxonomy but is in fact from the Greek word for frog. So, the hairy frog’s Latin name is “Hairy Frog”. Its species, robustus, is exactly what it sounds like, so to its credit, at least it’s recognised as big and hairy. 

2. We don’t know exactly why

You’d think with all the attention this frog gets for its bush, the purpose would have been obvious by now, but it seems like the role of these hairs is still poorly understood.

What is known is that they emerge on the male during mating season. And they’re not hairs at all, but live tissue, complete with blood vessels and plenty of surface area.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is the standard structure of diffusion surfaces for the exchange of small molecules, for example, in digestion or respiration. 

So, it’s thought that the bush has some function related to this – most likely for respiration, and in some way related to brood care, which appears to be the male’s job.

This also ties into the fact that in this species, the males are larger than the females, which is not the norm with frogs.

Larger, more muscular animals need more respiratory surface, and hairy frogs appear to have smaller lungs than most, so may grow special ‘gills’ during periods of peak activity. Why this is simpler than evolving better lungs is still a bit of a mystery. 

But it’s not only the hairs that are weird in this species. Another name for the hairy frog is the Wolverine frog, and not because of the beard. ¹

3. Does it hurt? Every time. 

Wolverine’s pelvic bush isn’t covered in great detail by the writers but it’s safe to say that it’s a Marvellous one. Yet, the wolverine frog isn’t named for this similarity, but one in which its bones snap into a sharp shard and push through its skin when it’s really, really angry. 

This terrifying defence mechanism is a form of self-defence, and while the protrusions are commonly called claws, they’re really just sharp bones that are levered through the frog’s skin to stab with.

It’s not something they likely do comfortably, but it’s effective enough that human hunters use spears instead of their hands to catch the frogs. 

Another Wolverine-like property of this frog is their ability to regenerate. Amphibians are all quite a lot better at this than real wolverines, and it comes in handy when the frog makes holes in itself – it can quickly recover. 

These muscular frogs, then, are pretty tough, but they don’t wait until adulthood to learn their trade. They are born this way. ^{2 3}

4. Their tadpoles are badass

Tadpoles are generally known for living in quiet, mostly still water. Not these ones, though! They hang out in fast-moving, even torrential rivers, and instead of nibbling adorably at fish food and algae, they actively hunt their prey with rows of horned teeth. ⁴

5. They’re hunted with sticks

Local peoples have traditionally hunted this species for food.

Some also believe they fall from the sky like that scene in Magnolia and can be consumed as a medicine for fertility (presumably in the absence of the squeaky breeders), and they do so with tools, on account of the sharp, stabby bones that the frog deploys when caught. 

The species as a whole is still considered of Least Concern to the IUCN but it is in decline, though it isn’t clear why.

Humans do eat the tadpoles as well as the adults, exerting heavy hunting pressure on the frogs, but it’s also likely to be an issue of water quality throughout their overlapping range with human expansion. 

Still, this species seems to fare well in agricultural land too, throwing a bit of a spanner into that explanation. ⁵

Hairy Frog Fact-File Summary

Scientific Classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Amphibia
Order:	Anura
Family:	Arthroleptidae
Genus:	Trichobatrachus
Species:	robustus

1. G. K. Noble (1925), “The integumentary, pulmonary, and cardiac modifications correlated with increased cutaneous respiration in the amphibia: A solution of the ‘hairy frog’ problem”, Wiley Online Library.
2. David C Blackburn (2008), “Concealed weapons: erectile claws in African frogs”, The Royal Society.
3. Catherine Brahic (2008), “’Horror frog’ breaks own bones to produce claws”, New Scientist.
4. Susan Schweiger (2024), “Don’t go with the flow: cranial adaptations of stream tadpoles in the Afrobatrachian family Arthroleptidae”, Oxford Academic.
5. “Hairy Frog”, IUCN Red List.