Leptobrachium abbotti lives in the primary and secondary lowland forests below approximately 1.000 m a.s. At its upper end of the elevational range, it is replaced by L. montanum.

This frog is brown above and mimics dead leaves. The head is broad. The eyes are big. Outside the iris the eye sclera is blueish, usually visible at the rear of the eye. The belly is marbled. The wide head indicates a spectrum of relatively large prey items, cockroaches, earthworms, spiders, snails and potentially smaller frogs. Note that the finger tips touch touch the ground in a bent position so that the anatomical dorsal side or the finger tip may touche the ground rather than the underside of the finger tip. However, this is not unique to L. abbotti but applies to other Leptobrachium.  

The advertisement call is a loud 'quak'. 

The tadpole of L. abbotti is found in small to medium-sized streams with rocky stream bed. Tadpoles grow big (up to 90 mm). The bigger the larvae grow, the more heavily pigmented darker they get. Younger larval stages are more blotched. A dark blotch is always present at the trunk-tail junction. In early larval stages, whitish ear capsules shine through the skin behind the eyes and may help to identify the tadpoles in the field.