There’s a tree frog in my luggage
June 23, 2025
One morning in late April, Research Curator of Herpetology Dr. Bryan Stuart drove to Raleigh-Durham International Airport to pick up an unusual passenger. Seems a live tree frog had become an accidental stowaway in the luggage of a person flying in from Honduras.
When Stuart met with the U.S. Customs & Border Protection agents who discovered the frog, they happily handed the amphibian over to the herpetologist — for “rehoming” but also hopeful for an accurate identification of the species.
“The frog was not a particularly valuable research specimen because it didn’t come with good location information,” Stuart said. “And it wouldn’t make a particularly valuable contribution to Living Collections because it wasn’t native to North Carolina or the southeastern U.S.” But Stuart felt compelled to pursue a real ID.
While his initial guess was that the frog belonged to the genus Smilisca, Stuart needed a blood sample to sequence its DNA and make a solid species determination. So he brought it to Chief Veterinarian and Director of Veterinary Sciences Dr. Dan Dombrowski.
After placing the frog under a routine quarantine and health screening, Dombrowski and Coordinator of Veterinary Sciences Shane Christian drew a small blood sample from the frog. Using a DNA sequencer located in the Museum’s Genomics & Microbiology Research Laboratory, Stuart was then able to identify the former stowaway as Smilisca baudinii, or common Mexican treefrog.
And now? “The frog is still alive and well here at the Museum’s Research Lab,” Stuart said. “It’s a male and occasionally entertains us with very loud calls when the barometric pressure drops from incoming storms.”
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