The Brazilian flea toad may be the world’s smallest vertebrate
Males measure about seven mm long on average
A Brazilian flea toad’s head is too tiny to bear its many crowns.
Scientists have bestowed the frog — which is native to Brazil but is neither a flea nor a toad — with two titles: The world’s smallest known amphibian and smallest known vertebrate.
From snout to rump, one Brachycephalus pulex measures just under 6.5 millimeters, herpetologist Mirco Solé and colleagues report February 7 in Zoologica Scripta.
That’s roughly half a millimeter shorter than the previous record holder and small enough to sit comfortably on a pinkie fingernail...
Read more: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/brazilian-flea-toad-smallest-vertebrate-amphibian
865 notes
·
View notes
Pataxo woman, Hamangai Marcos Melo, Brazil, by Pablo Albarenga
648 notes
·
View notes
“Effective Jan. 2, Brazil’s President Lula issued six decrees revoking or altering anti-environment-and-Indigenous measures from his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, acts highly celebrated by environmentalists and activists.
One of the decrees annuls mining in Indigenous lands and protected areas, another resumes plans to combat deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, and a third reinstates the Amazon Fund, a pool of funding provided to Brazil by developed nations to finance a variety of programs aimed at halting deforestation. [The fund] was stalled under Bolsonaro.
Right afterward, Norway announced the immediate release of already available funding for new projects as “President Lula confirmed his ambitions to reduce deforestation and reinstated the governance structure of the Amazon Fund.”
In an unprecedented act in Brazil’s history, Lula also created the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, complying with his promise to native people who supported his candidacy “to combat 500 years of inequality.”’
[Legal advisor Mauricio] Guetta noted that the newly resumed plans to fight deforestation will revive efforts that slashed deforestation rates by 83% between 2004 and 2012 and “social participation will again serve as a guide for the application of public policies.” According to him, changes during Bolsonaro’s administration regarding environmental sanctioning led the number of trials in the environmental agency to drop from an average of 5,300 per year between 2014 and 2018 to only 113 in 2019 and a mere 17 in 2020. “With the improvements made by the new rules of the current administration, these threats have been solved and the regular processing of proceedings on notices of infraction, an important mechanism to discourage the undertaking of environmental crimes, has been reestablished.”
He said he expected new “revocations” and normative revisions to occur in the coming days “considering the depth of abyss” of the last four years under Bolsonaro...
Unprecedented Ministry of Indigenous Peoples
In an unprecedented act in Brazil’s history, Lula also created the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, complying with his promise to Native people who supported his candidacy.
“No one knows our forests better or is better able to defend them than those who have been here since immemorial time. Each demarcated land is a new area of environmental protection,” Lula said in the National Congress. “We will repeal all injustices committed against the Indigenous peoples.”” -via Mongabay, 1/4/23
3K notes
·
View notes
Please reblog for a bigger sample size!
Had to redo the poll, so if you voted, please vote again!
500 notes
·
View notes