Website of the Week: FrogWatch USA™

Do you like frogs? Enjoy studying wildlife? Then join FrogWatch USA™, "a Citizen Science Monitoring Program" currently hosted through the National Wildlife Federation but soon to be part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Frogwatching season generally runs February through August. Once you learn how to frogwatch and register your study site (hey, I'm thinking maybe I could register my backyard next year!), you gather your frogwatching materials, record your data (weather conditions and frog calls) and submit it on a regular basis to FrogWatch USA™.

You will be helping scientists to figure out why amphibian populations are declining. After scientists identify some of the problems facing frogs, they can work on solutions to help save them. At the same time, you will get more in touch with nature through your study site. And you will learn to identify frogs from their calls.

I had no idea that frog calls were so diverse! eNature has a great page with frog and toad calls. I couldn't help myself - I started hitting all of the "listen" buttons at once. Soon, a whole symphony of voices filled my living room. It is amazing how the calls are so different. I can understand why it might be easier to identify a frog by sound than by sight.

If you are not in the United States, you still should be able to join a frogwatch in your area. For example, FrogWatch Saskatchewan is looking for volunteers, and check out Frog Atlas Australia.

Happy frogwatching!


Photo credit: Topato through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Friday Fun: Find the frogs

Here are two photographs from my recent backyard frog-spotting expeditions with Kerm. Can you find the frogs? They like to hide!

(Note: You can zoom in on the second image and get a pretty good look at the frog. See its striped legs? I wonder if it really is a Spring Peeper? I can't find pictures of any frogs common to my region that look quite like that.)

Our nocturnal neighbors

Birds aren't the only animals checking out our backyard. The other night, Itinerant Cryptographer let the dog out back and promptly announced to me that I needed to take a look outside. This is what I saw:


Only I didn't just see one frog on the outside of the sliding glass door. I counted fourteen of them! Each one was tiny, about the size of the tip of my thumb. They weren't real keen on me taking photographs of them, though. I think the flash scared them.

The next day, Kerm and I walked around in the backyard to look for the frogs to try and identify them.


I didn't get very good photographs, but I think they are treefrogs, possibly Spring Peepers. Spring Peepers are noctural treefrogs common to wooded areas in the Northeastern United States. The most distinguishing feature of a Spring Peeper is the "X" on its back, which you can almost see here (or could if I had worked my optical zoom a bit better!):


Note how tiny these frogs are! I have small hands for a human, but my fingers are giant-sized from their perspective. Can you imagine hopping around with clovers as tall as your head?

Kerm and I were tickled to see so many frogs in our backyard. But then we discovered that something else was interested in our frogs. Can you imagine what predator might like our frogs? Find out for sure next week!


Photo credits: Mama Joules

Giant frog gets new friend: Titanoboa

Well, the ancient giant "frog from hell" finally has some company! As reported by Nature, scientists have recently unearthed the world's biggest snake fossil. The snake, thought to have been about 42 feet long and have weighed 2,500 pounds (!), lived about 60 million years ago in northeastern Colombia. Primarily aquatic, the snake could slither on land and is thought to have crushed its prey like a modern day boa constrictor.

So what did this mammoth monster eat? Probably crocodiles or fish, according to an article written by TimesOnline environment reporter Lewis Smith. Based upon the size of these cold-blooded creatures, scientists are hypothesizing that the earth must have been quite warm back then, over 7 degrees F hotter than today's average temperatures.

Now, I realize that the giant frog was hopping around Africa some ten million years earlier than the giant snake went cruising along in South America. But doesn't it make you wonder what our planet looked like so many millions of years ago? (How big were the bugs?!)

This end up

Frog Egg MassPhoto credit: Pete Pattavina, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
My new friend Steven, over at Tropical Biodiversity, recently blogged about his rare pajurá de Óbidos (Pouteria speciosa) seed. He was concerned when the seed didn’t germinate – until he found out that he’d planted it upside down! Happily, when he turned the seed over, nature took its course and the seed is now a seedling.

Seeds aren’t the only “babies” with a top and a bottom. Recently, I watched a Discovery Channel show with a similar theme. A mama crocodile had laid her eggs too close to humans. Someone wanted both the crocodile and the eggs moved because every time anyone came near the nest, the mother croc would hiss at them. But moving crocodile eggs is a delicate business. If you turn the eggs the wrong way after a certain point of development, the little incubating baby crocodiles will drown. Australia’s Billabong Sanctuary discusses this on their Conservation & Breeding Projects page. Happily, most of the eggs in the story I was watching survived to hatch safely inside an animal sanctuary.

Frog eggs are a little more resilient. Soon after they are fertilized, frog eggs are known to align with the gravity vector (in other words, they have an up and a down). It was once believed that this rotation was crucial to their development, but recent studies of frog egg development in outer space have shown that this may not the case.

[Sidenote: If you’d like to learn more about animal studies in space, be sure to drop by NASA’s Astrobiology page. You can always Ask an Astrobiologist your questions! Also, Space Today Online has an interesting timeline of animals that have gone into outer space – an impressive list that includes not only frogs, but dogs, monkeys, rats, mice, and worms (among other critters).]

Website(s) of the Week: Year of the Frog

The Association of Zoos & Aquariums has designated 2008 as The Year of the Frog to highlight the plight of our amphibian friends. Many are facing the threat of extinction due to habitat loss and disease. Frogs are uniquely sensitive to changes in the environment because they spend part of their life cycle on land and part in the water.

Global efforts are now underway to help save the frogs. One such organization, Amphibian Ark, is co-sponsoring an auction from now through June 30, 2008. The winner gets to name an endangered frog species native to Ecuador! Proceeds from the auction will go toward helping to save endangered frogs in that country.

You can sign up to be a friend of the frogs -- and learn more about how to support this global amphibian-saving effort -- at Year of the Frog. And be sure to stop by Amphibian Ark's How people are helping amphibians for some heart-warming tales of conservation fund raising in action.
Wood FrogPhoto credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service