Amphibia · Anura
Quasipaa spinosaDavid, 1875
Spiny Paa Frog
Identification not confirmed. One observer recorded this animal as this species and no one has since agreed, so the photograph may show a different animal.
Photograph by Wang.QG, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A frog reaching 101 mm snout to vent.
Also called Chinese Edible Frog, Chinese Spiny Frog, Giant Spiny Frog.
Amphibia › Anura › Dicroglossidae › Quasipaa
- Grows to
- 101mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Diurnal, nocturnal
- Lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
- Weighs up to
- 161g
- greatest
Longer than 81% of all species in Dicroglossidae 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 16 to 178 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
20 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
2 pairs of these figures disagree
Length snout to vent (adult female mean) is given as 130.8, and Length snout to vent (greatest recorded) as 101 — but an average female cannot be longer than the longest recorded. They come from different sources and both are shown exactly as those sources give them.
Length snout to vent (adult male mean) is given as 123, and Length snout to vent (greatest recorded) as 101 — but an average male cannot be longer than the longest recorded. They come from different sources and both are shown exactly as those sources give them.
Standing in the world
- Conservation status
- Vulnerable
- Population trend
- Decreasing
as reported by the IUCN Red List
Size
- Body mass · greatestmeasured
- 161g5.7 oz
- Length snout to vent · greatest recordeddisputed
- 101mm4 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female meandisputed
- 130.8mm5.25 in
- Length snout to vent · adult male meandisputed
- 123mm4.75 in
maximum adult body mass as recorded in the source
snout-to-vent length, as this source reports for Anura
mean adult female snout-to-vent length
mean adult male snout-to-vent length
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Unknown
- Eats vertebrates
- Unknown
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
- Active
- Diurnal, nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- How the young develop
- Through a larval stage
- Average clutch
- 338
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 76–600eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Hatchling length
- 3.2–4.3mm0.1–0.2 in
midpoint of the reported range — Oliveira, São-Pedro, Santos-Barrera, Penone, and Costa, 2017, Sci. Data, 4:170123
Naming and history
- Described by
- David
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1875
Keeping one
Spiny Paa Frog is assessed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
No enclosure size is given here
Swiss law sets amphibian enclosure sizes family by family, and this family is not among the ones its table names. No figure is given rather than one borrowed from a different kind of animal.
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.
Feeding
18kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 161 g, the heaviest recorded for Spiny Paa Frog — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
Other inherited traits
Inherited characteristics and conditions recorded for this species. These are not morphs — nobody breeds for them.
- Sex determination1 reference
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 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 · 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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 Dicroglossidae
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). Quasipaa spinosa. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/quasipaa-spinosa
@misc{quasipaa_spinosa_2026,
title = {Quasipaa spinosa},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/quasipaa-spinosa}
}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.
- Huang, N. et al. (2023). Amphibian traits database: a global database on morphological traits of amphibians. Global Ecology and Biogeography 32, 633-641. Used under CC BY 4.0.