When observing a hoard of golden-backed frogs in Karnataka, India, a group of naturalists noticed one frog had a tiny mushroom sprouting out of its side. How the seemingly healthy frog came to grow its fungi companion — an occurrence that’s never been documented before — has left scientists baffled. …The species — known as Rao’s intermediate golden-backed frog, or the scientific name Hylarana intermedia — is found in abundance in the southwestern Indian states of Karnataka and Kerala. …The authors discovered the amphibian in June 2023 and did not collect it, so neither the cause of the phenomenon nor the fate of the frog is known. But through pictures, mycologists later identified the mushroom growing out of the frog’s flank as a common bonnet, part of the Mycena genus, a type of fungi that mostly grows on rotting wood from dead trees, the authors wrote in the published paper.