Amphibia · Anura
Afrixalus spinifronsCope, 1862
Natal Banana Frog
Photograph by Dylan Leonard, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
A frog reaching 25 mm snout to vent.
Also called Golden Spiny Reed Frog, Intermediate Spiny Reed Frog, Natal Leaf-folding Frog.
Amphibia › Anura › Hyperoliidae › Afrixalus
- Grows to
- 25mm
- greatest recorded
- Lives
- Aquatic, arboreal, terrestrial
- Red List
- Least Concern
Longer than only 18% of all species in Hyperoliidae anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 14 to 70 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
14 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 25mm1 in
snout-to-vent length, as this source reports for Anura
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Unknown
- Eats vertebrates
- Unknown
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
- Where it lives
- Aquatic, arboreal, terrestrial
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- How the young develop
- Through a larval stage
- Average clutch
- 30
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 10–50eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
midpoint of the reported range — Oliveira, São-Pedro, Santos-Barrera, Penone, and Costa, 2017, Sci. Data, 4:170123
Naming and history
- Described by
- Cope
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1862
Keeping one
- Land
- 25 × 13cm
- Water, at least 5 cm deep
- 5 × 3cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 25 cm tall on average.
The standard gives 10 × 5 body lengths of land and 2 × 1 of water, for two animals.
For each further animal the standard asks for another 5 × 5 cm of land and 3 × 3 cm of water.
Swiss Tierschutzverordnung (TSchV), SR 455.1, Anhang 2, Tabelle 6 — legally binding minimum enclosure sizes for amphibians, given as multiples of total body length and stated for two animals.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length, which for a frog is its body length of 1 in (25 mm) — how this is worked out.
Natal Banana Frog
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Still living
- — Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · greatest
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Diet
- — How it hunts
- — Active
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Venomous
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Limbs
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Region
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Suborder
- — Infraorder
- — Subspecies
- — Type locality
- — Habitat
- — Active in
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Hyperoliidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Afrixalus spinifrons. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/afrixalus-spinifrons
@misc{afrixalus_spinifrons_2026,
title = {Afrixalus spinifrons},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/afrixalus-spinifrons}
}Sources
- Oliveira, B.F. et al. (2017). AmphiBIO, a global database for amphibian ecological traits. Scientific Data 4:170123. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.