Godzilla’s dark eyes are deeply set atop his head, giving him near 180° vision. His skin is a bright green. He loves eating insects and is a skilful climber. And like all Australian Tree Frogs, Godzilla has a distinctive croak: an earthy bark somewhere between a seal’s and a puppy’s.
Godzilla is the face of the Australian Museum’s FrogID project, a citizen science project launched in 2017. The goal: find out where the frogs are and what habitat they breed in, and use that data to see which frogs may be at risk, and where. It’s an ambitious undertaking made possible through the world’s first smartphone app designed in partnership with IBM to record and report frog calls without disturbing the creatures. A call is one of the most accurate ways to identify frogs, so that’s what the app records, along with recording date, time, and GPS location.