EXPLORERS have discovered seven new species of ultra-adorable mini-frogs which look like the pieces from an old-school board game.

    Smaller than a fingernail but cuter than a button, the “miniaturized frogs” were found after five years of exploration in the mountains of the southern Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest.

    At just 1 cm in length, no Frenchman would be happy if one of these ended up on his dinner plate.

    Bold scientists had to trek high into the cloud forests to find the pint-sized pond dwellers.

    They live high on mountaintops, with unique species found on each peak.

    “Although getting to many of the field sites is exhausting, there was always the feeling of anticipation and curiosity about what new species could look like,” said Marcio Pie, a professor at the Universidade Federal do Parana, who led the quest to find them.

    The beasties are part of a genus called Brachycephalus, which was first discovered in 1842 by the German naturalist Johann Baptist von Spix.

    But it is very rare to discover new members of this genetic family, because getting to their remote hillsides is very difficult.

    Even though they have found six new species, explorers hope to find many more during their arduous hikes into the rainforest.

    Luiz Ribeiro, a research associate to the Mater Natura Institute for Environmental Studies, added, “This is only the beginning, especially given the fact that we have already found additional species that we are in the process of formally describing.”

    You might want to avoid kissing these creatures because members of the Brachycephalus family release a powerful neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin that causes paralysis and even death.

    Sadly, the frogs are very vulnerable because they exist in such small, isolated population, which means a slight change in the environment could cause an entire species to croak. (SD-Agencies)