Three previously unknown species of salamanders were discovered in Costa Rica's La Amistad National Park, near the border with Panama, U.K. scientists announced Friday.

Two are about the size of a pinky – one with a bold red stripe, one with a “ballistic” tongue that it propels at its prey – and the third is smaller than a fingernail. All three are probably unique to the remote rain forest reserve, Alex Monro of London's Natural History Museum told National Geographic Traveler.

Two of the creatures are members of the Bolitoglossa genus, and the tiny, three-centimeter species is a Nototriton, or dwarf salamander.

Monro and his team of scientists recorded more than 5,000 plants and animals during three expeditions to Central America. Their latest findings in La Amistad, the biggest forest reserve in the region, bring the total of the known number of Costa Rican salamanders to 43. Some 300 species are known around the world.

The punier critter and its striped and ballistic-tongued cousins will be named and catalogued by scientists here at the University of Costa Rica (UCR), in the project funded by the British government's Darwin Initiative to promote biodiversity conservation, the BBC reported.

-Tico Times