Category Zoology

 Frogs will eat almost anything they can catch—but only if it’s still alive. Most frogs eat insects, snails, and tadpoles. Large frogs will also eat small mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles. Most frogs hunt for food at night and hide during the day. Frogs don’t drink water at all, but simply absorb it through their skin.

Frogs depend on their excellent eyesight to spot their prey. Once they sight it, a frog will even leap out of the water to catch its meal.

The frog will usually unfurl its long tongue that is coated with a sticky substance with lightning speed. The prey sticks to the tongue and is swallowed whole.

Though frogs have teeth, they do not chew their food. Their teeth are used only to hold the prey in place, and to keep it from escaping.

If a frog eats something poisonous, it is not too bothered. It just brings its whole stomach out of its mouth, mid wipes it clean with its foot!

Tiny mantella frogs are among the most brightly coloured and spectacular of all frogs. They come in many colours- inky black with brilliant splotches of orange, bronze, yellow, blue, or emerald green. By having the bright colours of the more toxic species, the frogs are avoided by predators. Mantellas secrete enough toxins to make a predator sick or, at the very least, they can make themselves taste quite bad!

 Must frogs have webbed feet to help them swim, but not mantellas! Because they spend their lives crawling around on land or in leaves instead of swimming, there is no need for webbed toes. They also have short legs designed more for climbing than for long hops.

Mantellas are found only on Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa. Like all amphibians, mantellas have skin that soaks up water. If something happens to change the water, amphibians are one of the first species to feel it. Mantellas are important to Madagascar because their health can help scientists determine the health of Madagascar’s rain forests, air, and water-ways. 

    Poison dart frogs show off some of the most brilliant and beautiful colours on Earth. Their colouring can be yellow, gold, copper, red, green, blue, or black, depending on where they live. There are more than 100 species of poison dart frogs, varying in colour and pattern. The black and green species have black spots, the strawberry or blue jeans frog is all red with blue legs, the yellow-banded species appears painted with yellow and black. Colour shades vary among frogs within a species. It is the skin that contains the frog’s poison.

Continue reading “Why are poison dart frogs important?”

The glass frog is a tiny frog that gets its name because of the translucent skin on its underside that allows you to see its inner organs, right down to its beating heart! This translucent skin makes the glass frog very difficult for predators to spot, as it almost becomes a part of the leaf it is sitting on.

Glass frogs are very small, the average one being between 1.4 centimetres and 3 centimeters, and they generally live in the rainforests of Central and South America. They are at a high elevation, so these rainforests are called cloud forests as the canopy is wrapped in cloud – and this is a further reason for which the glass frog’s transparency is very useful. Although they live by streams and rivers, almost all glass frogs live in trees, only coming lower down to breed. 

As you can guess, tree frogs are called by this name because they make their home in the branches of trees. Some inhabit smaller plants, and a few species are ground-dwellers. Tree frogs are found in most parts of the world. They vary in length from less than two and a half centimetres to more than ten centimetres.

 Tree frogs are very agile, and can climb quickly. How do they do this? They have pads at the ends of their fingers and toes. These pads help in climbing, because they are rough and are covered with a sticky secretion. Some tree frogs have claw-shaped fingers and toes, and most kinds have webbed hands, webbed feet, or both. Many tree frogs can change colour, usually to match their surroundings. As winter approaches, tree frogs burrow into the humus on the forest floor. Their tissues and body fluids are protected from freezing by glycerol, made in the frog’s cells.

Tree frogs are noted for the loudness and variety of their calls, made only by the male. Most tree frogs lay their eggs in water. There are three main families of tree frogs that include the so-called flying frogs. Actually, flying frogs don’t fly- they just glide from tree to tree. 

Frogs lay their eggs in water or wet places. The egg begins as a single cell. Several thousand are sometimes laid at once. Gradually, a jellylike covering develops, which protects the egg. The single cell in the egg eventually splits into two. These two split making four cells, and so on. Eventually, there are many cells in the egg. The mass of cells in the egg come to form an embryo. Organs and gills begin to form, and in the mean-time, the embryo lives off its internal yolk.

 After 21 days, the embryo leaves its jelly shell, and attaches itself to a weed in the water. This quickly becomes a tadpole, which is a baby frog. The tadpoles grow until they are big enough to break free into the water. This can take from 3 days to 3 weeks, depending on what kind of frog they will become. The tadpole has a long tail, and lives in the water. It is extremely vulnerable, and must rely on its camouflage to protect itself.

After about five weeks, the tadpole begins to change. Over time, the tadpole becomes more and more froglike. Eleven weeks after the egg was laid, a fully developed frog with lungs, legs, and no tail emerges from the water.