page_title: Saddleback toad
section_title: Voice and hearing
hierarchical_section_title: Saddleback toad / Voice and hearing
caption_attribution_description: English: Brachycephalus pitanga, captive/collected, Museu de Zoologia da Universidade Estadual de Campinas 'Adão José Cardoso', Brazil
context_page_description: The saddleback toads are a genus of tiny toads and frogs in the family Brachycephalidae in the order Anura, ranging from south Bahia to Santa Catarina in southeastern Brazil. The genus includes two main groups, the often brightly coloured pumpkin toadlets, and the overall brown and more frog-like flea frogs, which once were placed in their own genus Psyllophryne. Some pumpkin toadlets are toxic and their often bright colours are considered aposematic. At about 1 cm or less in snout–to–vent length, the flea frogs are some of the smallest frogs in the world.
  The saddleback toads live among leaf litter in the Atlantic rainforest, ranging from near sea level to an altitude of 1,900 m, with most species restricted to highland cloud forest. They are mostly diurnal, feed on tiny invertebrates and breeding is by direct development, with eggs laid on land and hatching into young frogs.
  The majority of the Brachycephalus species have only been discovered in the 21st century. Most species have tiny ranges and are seriously threatened.
context_section_description: Although not very loud for a frog/toad (even relative to their tiny size), Brachycephalus are most often located by their call. The primary calls are by adult males, but females and young may also call. A single square meter (slightly more than 10 sq ft) can host as many as five calling males, and at a single location one may hear tens of males at once. Males will defend their small territory from other males, but in most cases voice or visual displays are sufficient and fights are avoided.
  The advertising calls by males are performed either from a hidden or an exposed position. Whether a species is dull or brightly coloured does not accurately predict if it prefers an exposed or hidden calling position. In addition to advertising calls, there are aggressive calls directed towards other males when close. The calls of the different species differ to various extent in frequency, speed, structure and other features.
  Peculiarly, at least the brightly coloured pumpkin toadlets B. ephippium and B. pitanga are unable to hear the frequency of their own advertising calls, as their ears are underdeveloped. Instead their communication appears to rely on certain movements like the vocal sac that inflates when calling, mouth gaping and waving of their arms. It is speculated that their calling is a vestigiality from the ancestral form of the genus, whereas their reduced hearing ability (they do have some hearing ability in frequencies outside their call) is a novel change in these species. Sounds make them more vulnerable to predators, but there has likely been little direct evolutionary pressure to lose it because of their toxicity. Unlike B. ephippium, B. pitanga and some others, many species in the genus always call from a hidden position, making any signalling by movements inefficient, and it is likely they can hear their own calls. Direct studies of the medium-brightly coloured (mostly dull above, bright below) pumpkin toadlet B. actaeus and the dull-coloured flea frog  B. hermogenesi strongly suggest that they are able to hear their own calls.
caption: Unique among all animals, B. pitanga and at least one other pumpkin toadlet species are deaf to their own advertising calls[30][31]
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