Ceratophrys cornuta, the Surinam horned frog, is a bulky, wide-mouthed frog of the family Ceratophryidae. It ranges across the northern part of South America, including Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru and Suriname, largely within the Amazon region. Like its relative Ceratophrys ornata, it belongs to a genus nicknamed “pacman frogs” for the shape of their mouths, though this species keeps to Amazonian forest rather than open grassland.
Identification
The species is a bulky frog reaching up to about 200 mm in length; exact size figures sit in the facts box above. Its most distinctive features are the horn-like projections above the eyes and an exceptionally wide mouth, the trait that gives the genus its common name. Body colouring is mottled brown, breaking up its outline against the leaf litter it sits in while waiting for prey.
Habitat and range
Ceratophrys cornuta is a nocturnal, ground-dwelling ambush predator of Amazonian forests, relying on its wide mouth to take a broad range of prey. Reported prey includes other frogs, fish, lizards and mice, taken opportunistically from ambush rather than pursued. The species occupies different ecological niches from its relative Ceratophrys ornata and does not interbreed with it in the wild, despite the two sharing a genus and a general body plan.
Its range spans the Amazon region of northern South America, including Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru and Suriname, a far larger and wetter range than the grasslands its southern relative occupies.
Behaviour and breeding
Females lay up to 1,000 eggs at a time, wrapped around aquatic plants, anchoring the clutch in place rather than leaving it to drift. The tadpoles that hatch are cannibalistic, attacking each other and tadpoles of other species soon after hatching, a trait shared with several other ambush-hunting frogs and one that thins the brood quickly in the water bodies where the eggs are laid.
Conservation
The IUCN category is in the facts box above, drawn from the species’ Wikidata item and its most recent assessment (IUCN 2022.2). No specific threat is documented in the sources checked for this page, so the category above is the reliable figure.
Similar species
Within the genus Ceratophrys, Ceratophrys ornata, the Argentine horned frog, shares the same wide-mouthed build and horn-like eye projections but is distinguished by its bright green-and-red colouring and its South American grassland range, against the mottled brown colouring and Amazonian forest range of Ceratophrys cornuta. The two ranges do not overlap, and per the sources above, the species do not interbreed.