Since the rain forest provides a vertical as well as a horizontal environment, many animals in it have taken to the air—even, apparently, frogs. When Alfred Russel Wallace saw his first specimen of the tree frog
Rhacophorus nigropalmatus in 1885, he concluded that its enormous webbed feet must have some sort of aerial function. For 80 years, however, no scientist saw his "flying frog" in action—until these pictures were taken in 1964. Now at last it is known that the frog's outspread foot and limb membranes act like little parachutes as it makes a more or less vertical descent through the trees.
