Getting this list down to ten was really really hard. I’ve tried to avoid the temptation to earn extra fanboy points by going for the really obscure stuff – so no oilbird, no pangolin – but I think I’ve got a pretty pleasing mix. My final ten includes three birds, three mammals, one reptile, one fish, one invertebrate and one amphibian – the Wallace’s Flying Frog, Rhacophorus nigropalmatus.
There are various species of flying frog, apparently, but this one’s the biggest. You can see the enormously long toes and webby bits on the photo above, which is from Access Excellence. The best ‘flying’ shot I’ve found is this, from National Geographic:
They don’t really fly, of course, they just glide from tree to tree. But that’s still pretty fab. I was very tempted by all the gliders – flying squirrels, snakes, lizards and fish – but I had to pick just the one, so this is it. The fact you have to go to Borneo to see them, and you still almost certainly won’t, adds to the glamour. And they’re even named after Alfred Russel Wallace.
That’s what I call a top frog.