A free field guide to the frogs and amphibians of Borneo — 122 species, each with photographs, scientific names, Malay and Indonesian names, and notes on habitat and where they are found. Nothing to buy and nothing to sign up for.
What Borneo's amphibian list looks like
Borneo is one of the great places on Earth for frogs, and unlike the mammals they are genuinely easy to find. The island has well over 150 described amphibian species and new ones are still being described; the guide covers 119. Roughly a third are endemic to Borneo, and a good proportion of those are restricted to particular mountains or river systems.
The famous ones live up to their reputation. Wallace's flying frog glides between trees on webbed feet the size of a hand. The Bornean horned frog sits in leaf litter looking exactly like a dead leaf until it moves. The file-eared tree frog and the harlequin tree frog are what most people photograph on their first night walk. Underneath them sit the litter frogs, the narrow-mouthed frogs and the stream and rock frogs that make up the real list.
Not everything here is a frog
Borneo also has caecilians — legless, burrowing amphibians that look like a cross between a snake and a giant earthworm and are neither. They are the group most likely to be misidentified, and the one most likely to be killed on sight because someone took it for a snake. If you turn one up in wet soil, in a drain or crossing a path after rain, it has no scales, almost no visible eye, and a short tentacle between eye and nostril that no snake has. It is harmless.
Where and when to find them
Go out at night, after rain, near water. That is close to the whole method. Forest streams at Danum Valley, the trails and ponds around Bako, and Mulu all produce well, and a wet night at any lowland lodge will find you a dozen species within a few hundred metres of the boardwalk. Frogs are also the one group where you can identify a lot of what is around you by ear before you see anything.
Using this instead of a book
The printed Bornean amphibian literature is excellent but specialist, expensive, and hard to find outside Malaysia. This is free, photographic, and searchable while you are standing in the dark holding a phone. There is an honest comparison of the two on the field guide page. See also snakes and lizards.
All 122 species
Each card has two colour-coded toggles:
turns lime green — adds it to your trip planner
turns blue — marks it as seen in my sightings
