HOME |
RSS | 
You’ve already seen the video of the horned lizard playing Ant Crusher, but if you were curious what a bullfrog would do in the same situation, here’s your answer. Apparently, they are a lot more bitter about being cheated out of a meal.
Via Geekosystem
The bearded dragon seemed resigned to accept that the ants he killed in a video game couldn’t be eaten. But this African Bullfrog will not tolerate being an instrument of his human’s amusement.
-via Geekosystem
These frogs aren’t going to give up their legs lightly. Species of frog are rapidly evolving adaptations, such as the small fangs they’ve grown, on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, and scientists are amazed by how far they’ve come in such a short period of time. One reason is their lack of competition on the island, another reason being the frogs that live on the island all dwell within their own individual pocket, so as to avoid further rivalry over food. Nine species of frogs on Sulawesi have never been documented by scientist before, and thirteen species have developed the cute little choppers, making them look like something out of a Twilight-Muppets crossover. There’s lots more to read on the subject at PhysOrg.com.
Comments Off
The video isn’t nearly as raunchy as my title might have you believe, but it can be even more disturbing. I’ll be honest, this video gives me chills every time I watch it. Even so, it’s fascinating to watch the surinam toad give birth, being as how the male embeds the eggs on the female’s back.
YouTube user thearchipelago went frog gigging and brought back these three whoppers. When he adds salt to the raw meat, they start twitching wildly. Why does this happen? Marshall Brain of How Stuff Works explains:
Because these are fresh frog legs, the cells inside them are all still intact. The biochemical machinery still functions. There is still a source of energy for the muscles in the form of unused ATP molecules stored in the cells. All that the muscles need is something to activate them and they can still contract and relax (until they run out of ATP or something else shuts down the biochemical machinery).
Link via Geekosystem
Zoologists implanted frogs with radio transmitters. The result was that most of the transmitters were found in the frogs’ bladders or fully excreted. Further experimentation indicated that certain species of frogs and toads have bladders that can detect, surround, and excrete foreign objects. At Wired, Dave Mosher writes:
They enlisted five green tree frogs and five cane toads, implanting small inert beads in each the same way they implanted the radio transmitters. Each tree frog expelled its bead within 23 days. One cane toad also gave its bead the boot, and the beads in the other four toads had migrated to their bladders.
To unravel the secrets of the process, the zoologists implanted beads in 31 more cane toads, toxic amphibians native to South America but introduced to northeastern Australia in 1935 to control beetle infestations. (Since then, Shine says, the toads have become invasive and poisoned populations of large predators such as pythons. As a result, ecologists now closely track their numbers and behavior.)
Toads dissected on sequential days revealed that the bladder grew a thin offshoot of cells to surround the bead, which later developed into mature, bladder-like tissue and merged with the organ’s main cavity. From there, they “floated freely in the urine” and were peed out if near the bladder’s opening.
Link | Photo by Flickr user Sam Fraser-Smith used under Creative Commons license
Microhyla nepenthicola frogs may be small, but they have a loud mating call. That’s how scientists on Borneo discovered them:
Adult males of the new micro-species range in size from 10.6 and 12.8 millimetres and the pea-sized amphibian has been named Microhyla nepenthicola after the plant on Borneo on which it lives, according to taxonomy magazine Zootaxa.[...]
The scientists said they tracked the frogs by their call, a series of “harsh rasping notes” that started at sundown.
They then made the frogs jump onto a piece of white cloth to study them.
Link via io9 | Photo: Indraneil Das
For seven years, The Smithsonian magazine has held an annual photography contest. The five categories are Altered Images, the Natural World, Americana, Travel, and People. Pictured above is Laurie McAndish King’s winning submission in the Natural World category. It’s a photograph of a tiny frog hiding in the leaves of a plant.
King was experimenting with a new camera in a local Mendocino County garden when a frog paused for a moment on the leaves of a nearby plant. She snapped; it hopped. “I’ve gone halfway around the world looking for new experiences,” she says. “This photo will always remind me of the beauty in my own backyard.”
You can view the other winners at the link.
Link | Previously: The Smithsonian By the Numbers
Comments Off I’ve never actually tried to pet a toad, but I certainly didn’t think they would react to it like this.
If you have a serious phobia of frogs, rats, bees or snakes, you probably shouldn’t read WebEcoist’s article on the most invasive species in the world. On the other hand, if you don’t have any phobias, it’s fascinating to know just how devastating a pair of bunnies ended up being to Australia and how Florida and other areas of the South are being taken over by released and escaped Burmese pythons.
It was one of the most contentious debates in the history of environmental issues: what was causing wild frogs to develop with missing limbs?
During the late 1980′s and early 90′s, researchers received reports of wild frogs being found with missing and or extra limbs. Some felt predatory insects were to blame, and others thought it was caused by environmental degradation such as thinning of the ozone layer.
Biology professor Stanley Sessions and other researchers were able to determine that a parasitic flatworm disrupted the developing structure of a tadpole, leading to extra limbs. However, what was causing limb loss was unknown until recently.
Sessions and colleague Brandon Ballengee of the University of Plymouth, U.K., found the apparent answer during one of their recent collaborations.
As part of this work, Ballengee and Richard Sunter, the official Recorder of Reptiles and Amphibians in Yorkshire, spent time during the summers of 2006 to 2008 surveying the occurrence of deformities in wild amphibians at three ponds in the county.
In all, they found that between 1.2% and 9.8% of tadpoles or metamorphosed toads at each location had hind limb deformities. Three had missing eyes.
“We were very surprised when we found so many metamorphic toads with abnormal limbs, as it was thought to be a North American phenomenon,” says Ballengee.
While surveying, Ballengee also discovered a range of natural predators he suspected could be to blame, including stickleback fish, newts, diving beetles, water scorpions and predatory dragonfly nymphs.
So Ballengee and Sessions decide to test how each predator preyed upon the tadpoles, by placing them together in fish tanks in the lab.
None did, except three species of dragonfly nymph.
Crucially though, the nymphs rarely ate the tadpoles whole. More often than not, they would grab the tadpole and chew at a hind limb, often removing it altogether.
“Once they grab the tadpole, they use their front legs to turn it around, searching for the tender bits, in this case the hind limb buds, which they then snip off with their mandibles,” says Sessions.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
Sure it’s stinky, but a frog has got to live somewhere! Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, a research fellow from the National University of Singapore discovered 3 species of frogs living in elephant dung in Sri Lanka:
Campos-Arceiz examined 290 elephant dung piles and found six frog individuals in five dung piles, representing three species: the ornate narrow-mouthed frog Microhyla ornata, another narrow-mouthed species Microhyla rubra, and a frog species in the Sphaerotheca genus.
While Campos-Arceiz is uncertain why the frogs were residing in the elephant dung, he speculates that “elephant dung provides a good shelter. I found the frogs in an arid area during the dry season. Under such conditions and in the absence of litter, elephant dung is probably a good alternative to spend the day in. Elephants digest food very poorly. Their feces contain a large proportion of undigested material and are highly fibrous. When fresh, elephant dung is humid and probably cooler than the environment during the day. Moreover, frogs could eat some of the many invertebrates present in elephant dung.”
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by dradell.
In a strange traditional ceremony, two 7 year-old girls in Tamil Nadu, India were married off to two frogs.
The ceremony, an annual feature during the Pongal (harvest) festival, is conducted “to prevent the outbreak of mysterious diseases in the village”.
The girls, Vigneswari and Masiakanni, dressed up in traditional bridal finery — gilded sarees and gold jewelery — married the frog ‘princes’ in separate, elaborate ceremonies at two different temples in the presence of hundreds of villagers.
These are two frogs that will not be turning into fairytale princes, they actually got released back into temple ponds after the ceremony. I wonder if the girls are still allowed to get married when they grow up.
Link Image Via Somegl [Flickr]
