A super-rare mutant toad with five legs has been discovered, and specialists believe it was malformed as a juvenile owing to an injury.
Michael Messenger discovered it in Queensland, Australia, after noticing it bouncing among the plants outside his house.
Michael grabbed his phone and took a photo of this particular amphibian, which he described as being around the size of a hand.
According to ABC, he attempted to go one step further and grab it, intending to freeze it and preserve the extra limb.
The toad was too quick for Michael, despite not using the fifth appendage to gain an edge.
The toad’s extra leg flopped limp off its backside (Image: Michael Messenger)
“I don’t think [the extra leg] has any function, it just drags behind, but it looks weird,” he told ABC.
Macquarie University’s Professor Rick Shine, an evolutionary biologist and ecologist, said five-legged toads are “very rare” but not unheard of.
“In the course of research we’ve handled many thousands of toads, I’ve probably seen it two or three times myself,” he said.
‘I don’t think [the extra leg] has any function, it just drags behind, but it looks weird,’ Michael said (Image: Michael Messenger)
He noted that an injury to a tadpole during its early stages of development can result in the formation of two limbs instead of one.
He said: “Other animals have babies in utero or in eggs so they’re protected, but tadpoles aren’t.
“The tadpole is swimming around in the open and usually one parasite attacks the tadpole and injures the limb bud and you end up with two legs.”
Michael tried to go one step further and catch it, planning to freeze it and preserve the extra leg (Image: Michael Messenger)
Professor Shine noted that sightings of five-legged toads are even more rare since the extra limb is difficult to drag around, making them more vulnerable to predators.
The BBC reports that a five-legged toad was discovered in the UK in 2010.
Faye Sweeney, who spotted it at the Attenborough Nature Reserve in Nottinghamshire, said: “It reminded me of The Simpsons when they find the three eyed fish!”
Reports of five-legged toads and frogs are rare but not unheard of (Image: Michael Messenger)
The malformation can also develop in frogs, which alarmed experts in the United States and Canada during a flurry of sightings in the 1990s.
Researchers concluded the culprit was a parasitic flatworm called Ribeiroia Ondatrae.
The larvae attach themselves to the underdeveloped limbs of tadpoles then harden and form a cyst, which splits the leg as it grows.