Close up of critically endangered micro frog, Microbatrachella capensis, at night, Kenilworth Racecourse Conservation Area, Cape Town, South Africa.

---

The critically endangered micro frog (Microbatrachella capensis), at cm long, is small enough to perch on a thumbnail. Ironically, its continued existence depends on much bigger creatures—the racehorses that compete at Cape Town’s Kenilworth Racecourse. When the track was constructed in 1882, it inadvertently protected a ring of low-lying Cape Flats sand fynbos. Since then, a growing city all but obliterated this habitat type, which is also rich in endemic plants. Remnant populations of the micro frog are known from six localities, but the relic hippo wallows inside the racecourse are the last home for the frogs in the heavily transformed Cape Flats.

---

Size: 3544px × 2363px
Location: Kenilworth Racecourse Conservation Area, Kenilworth, Cape Town, South Africa
Photo credit: © Morgan Trimble / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No

Keywords: africa, amphibian, animal, area, biodiversity, camera, cape, capensis, color, colour, conservation, critically, dark, endangered, flash, floating, fragment, frog, front, full, grass, green, habitat, horizontal, image, kenilworth, length, location, macro, micro, microbatrachella, nature, night, nocturnal, people, photography, pond, pool, portrait, protected, province, puddle, racecourse, rare, scene, small, south, species, swimming, theme, tiny, town, urban, vegetation, view, water, western, wet