Cool Facts - Frogs & Toads
All frogs and toads are amphibians. They live part of their life in water and part on land. Flooded fields, ditches, or small woodland ponds are favorites - though large puddles are even used. The eggs hatch and the babies start life as tadpoles, living in water, breathing through gills like fish and eating aquatic plants. After a few weeks, their hind legs form and enlarge. At the same time, their tails begin to shrink. Soon front legs appear, the gills are lost and the tadpole begins to use his new lungs. By the end of the summer the froglets and toadlets are eating insects, small spiders and worms.
They are cold blooded and have moist, slimy skin.
Frogs go through metamorphosis.
Toad
What’s the difference between frogs and toads? Toads have dry warty skin, shorter hind legs, hop rather than jump and generally live on land. Frogs have smooth wet skin, teeth, long hind legs so they jump rather than hop and live in or near water. Female toads lay eggs in long parallel strings; depending on the species, female frogs lay their eggs singly, in clumps or as a film on the water surface.Males of all frog and toad species can sing - even underwater. Because he closes his mouth and nostrils when he moves air rapidly back and forth over his vocal cords, he doesn’t need to breathe when he calls. Many anurans (which is another word for frogs and toads) have enlarged or expandable vocal sacs to help their calls resonate.
Frogs and toads have to shut their eyes to swallow
The blinking motion pushes the frog’s (or toad’s) eyes down into the upper part of his mouth and forces the food down his throat.
Frogs have teeth.
They have a ridge of very small cone teeth around the upper edge of the jaw and may also have teeth on the roof of the mouth. The teeth are used to hold prey.
Frogs make antifreeze.
Frogs are cold-blooded and hibernate to survive our winters. They don’t lower their metabolism like most hibernators. Instead, a high concentration of glucose in the frog’s vital organs prevents freezing. A partially frozen frog will stop breathing and appear quite dead. When it warms up, its frozen portions will thaw and its heart and lungs resume activity. There is such a thing as the living dead!
Toads can poison predators.
Toads defend themselves by producing toxic or unpleasant-tasting skin secretions from the parotoid glands behind their ears which are released when they are grabbed; even their eggs and tadpoles taste nasty. The toxins are harmless to humans.
Frogs appeared on Earth about 200 million years ago. (We arrived about two million years ago.) There are over 4000 species in the world.
Frogs which live near noisy, fast flowing streams can’t always hear mating calls above the roar of water. Instead, they signal their intentions by waving to prospective partners!
Some rainforest tadpoles take over a year to change into frogs.
All frog eggs laid in open ponds have a black patch at the top. This is a filter which cuts out the damaging ultraviolet rays of the sun which would otherwise harm the developing tadpoles.
Frogs’ eyes bulge out giving them all round vision. They also help the frog to swallow.
When the frog catches a mouthful of food its eyes sink through an opening in the skull and force food down its throat.
Many frogs produce chemicals on their skin which help to protect them from bacteria and fungi.
Scientists are using frogs to develop medicines for different diseases. A chemical compound which comes from the skin of Green Tree Frogs is used as a gut stimulant after abdominal surgery and also to block schizophrenia symptoms.
Other frog compounds contract and expand blood vessels, make hearts beat more strongly, help digest food, combat viruses and may eventually be used to repel mosquitoes and act as sunscreen.
Frogs go through several different stages as they grow. First, a frog lays an egg underwater. A tadpole hatches out of the egg and lives underwater. In time, the tadpole’s lungs form and its legs grow. Right before the tadpole becomes a frog, its gills disappear. Then it must live on land. It hops onto shore as a tiny frog.
Some animals eat frog eggs. That’s why one kind of frog mother swallows her eggs. The eggs stay in her stomach for up to eight weeks. They turn into tiny frogs inside the mother’s stomach and then hop out of her mouth.
Most frogs use their long, sticky tongues to eat insects, such as flies. Other frogs don’t have tongues. They grab bugs and stuff them into their mouths. These frogs swallow their food whole. As the frog swallows, it closes its eyes. Its eyeballs sink into its skull.
The frog’s eyeballs force the food down its throat.
There are over 200 species of frogs in the family Dendrobatidae, or poison frogs; they range in size from .5 inches to just over 2 inches.
Leimadophis epinephelus, a frog eating snake is the only known predator of the poison frog.
Poison frogs are sometimes referred to as poison dart or poison arrow frogs. They received this name due to the fact that some South American tribes will use the toxins secreted from the animals to poison their arrows or darts when hunting.
A group of frogs is called an army.
The Golden Poison Arrow frog is deadliest of all of the poison frogs. The toxins from one animal can kill ten men.
Scientists around the world have been studying these amphibians to create new medicine. Painkillers 200 times more effective than morphine have been produced from the toxins of the phantasmal poison frog.
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