Mushroom growing on a frog in India baffles scientists

Scientists are baffled by a frog that was discovered in India, which seems to have a mushroom growing out of its side.

A frog with a mushroom growing out of its side

This could be the first time that a mushroom has been seen growing on the flank of a frog. (Maliye et al.)

Scientists made a surprising discovery in the foothills of the Western Ghats in India — a mushroom growing out of the side of the frog. This is the first time that a mushroom has been observed growing out of a living being.

On June 19, 2023, the researchers discovered several “Rao’s Golden-backed frogs” in a rainwater-fed pond on the roadside in the foothills of the Kudremukha ranges at Mala, Karkala, in Karnataka. But one of the frogs had what looked like a white-coloured growth coming out from the right side of its body. As it turned out, that was a mushroom growing out of a living frog.

The frog was not captured, instead, the researchers took pictures of it and documented it in a note published in the journal Reptiles and Amphibians. Fungus experts who looked at the images identified the white growth to be a Bonnet mushroom, which usually grows on dead and rotting wood.

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There are many fungi that grow in a symbiotic relationship with other organisms. There are also some that are parasitic and can cause infections like mucormycosis, more commonly known as “black fungus.” But this is the first time that a mushroom has been observed growing on a living organism, according to The Independent.

“To the best of our knowledge, never has a mushroom sprouting from the flank of a live frog been documented. The frog was not collected, so no prognosis is possible,” wrote the researchers in the paper.

There are many theories about how the mushroom began growing there, especially considering that the humid conditions of the Western Ghats would have provided a great environment to grow. But since the frog was not captured, it is unclear how exactly the mushroom was growing. It also cannot be determined how the growth of the mushroom is affecting the frog.

The researchers raise concern about the discovery because there is already a fungus that threatens more than 700 species of amphibians across the world: Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. It causes the disease chytridiomycosis, which can cause sporadic deaths in some populations while having a 100 per cent mortality rate in others. There are no known effective measures to control its propagation and protect different frog species. But it is not like there aren’t any clues.

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Bonnet mushroom expert and mycologist Christoffer Bugge Harder told The New York Times that the growth does look like a bonnet mushroom but it could also be something else that looks similar. Harder and his research team recently discovered that Mycena (bonnet mushroom) can grow not only on decaying wood but also on the living roots of trees. This means that the mushroom genus can switch from a symbiotic relationship to a parasite or a decomposer.

But even that is nothing but a hypothesis at best and scientists need a lot more information before finding a conclusion to the mystery.

Sydney Glassman, a fungal ecologist at the University of California Riverside told NYT that she is not even convinced that the growth is even a mushroom. Researchers will need a lot more evidence, like spore and genetic samples, before they conclusively identify it as a bonnet mushroom or indeed, a mushroom of any kind.