SYDNEY: An Australian researcher who discovered a new species of flying frog near Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and named it after her mother said on Tuesday it was a rare find so close to such a big city.

Helen's Flying Frog was first discovered by Jodi Rowley, an amphibian expert from Sydney's Australian Museum, in 2009 during a field trip to the forests fringing the city previously known as Saigon.

Rowley initially thought the tree-dwelling flying frog, so named for the huge webbed feet that allow it to glide or parachute across the forest canopy, was a familiar species when she saw it sitting on a log beside a path.

It was not until a later trip, when she saw a specimen of the original type of frog in another part of Vietnam, that she realised her creature was something quite different.—AFP