06/30/09

Frogs: A Chorus of Colors

On Sunday Susan and I ventured into New York City to see Frogs: A Chorus of Colors at the American Museum of Natural History, a traveling exhibit from Clyde Peeling’s Reptiland. The exhibit features over 200 live frogs in recreated natural habitats, complete with rock ledges, live plants, and waterfalls.

If you live near NYC or need an excuse to visit the Big Apple, I highly recommend this exhibit. Most of the exhibits are eye level for even the youngest kids, who had fun trying to spot the well-camouflaged frogs. They can also push buttons to hear frog calls and view videos of frogs in action.

Here are a few things we learned:

  • The Cuban tree frog is probably the smallest frog at only 1/2 inch in length
  • The cane toad lays 35,000 eggs in a single string
  • The Australian water-holding frog digs in desert soils and can remain underground for years
  • The world’s biggest frog is the West African goliath at 15 inches and weighing 7 lbs, as much as a newborn infant.

We saw a leaf mimic frog, whose head resembles a curving brown leaf to help it hide in the leaves. We saw other frogs that blended in perfectly with the moss, rocks, and bark. We watched one miniature frog, about the size of a fingernail, leaping from leaf to leaf, finally leaping and sticking on the glass right in front of Susan’s nose.

The stars of the exhibit were the poison dart frogs. Their blue, yellow, and green jewel-like colors warn predators not to eat them. One type of poison dart frog can kill 20,000 mice or 10 people with its poison, which is excreted through the skin. As the label on this exhibit says, “Don’t kiss these frogs!”

Bumblebee poison dart frog copyright Taran Grant/AMNH

Bumblebee poison dart frog copyright Taran Grant/AMNH

06/26/09

Save Northern Leopard Frogs (and Protect Human Health)

A reader of FROGS ARE GREEN sent along information about a petition sponsored by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund:

Endosulfan is a deadly poison that has been banned across the European Union and in many other countries, but not the U.S. This deadly poison is extremely dangerous for frogs, birds… and even people who are exposed to it.

Even low doses of endosulfan can be fatal to species like the threatened northern leopard frog, which is already in decline. In humans, endosulfan can cause birth defects and other health risks. In extreme cases, endosulphan exposure can cause unconsciousness and even death.

The U.S. has yet to take endosulfan off the market, but with your help we can change things for northern leopard frogs, farm workers and others threatened by this dangerous pesticide.

The deadline for public comments is Monday, June 29. Please urge the EPA to help protect our health, our environment, and our frogs by banning endosulfan.

They are trying to get 5000 signatures and so far have 1551. Please add your signature!

Northern Leopard Frog

Northern Leopard Frog


06/21/09

What the Frogs Are Telling Us

In 1995, a teacher and her students in southern Minnesota discovered a pond full of frogs with deformities: some frogs with extra legs or eyes missing, others with extra eyes or missing limbs.

A Plague of Frogs by William Souder tells the story of what happened next as these deformed frogs were later found all over Minnesota, and in other parts of the US. The book is both an ecological detective story and a tale of scientific investigation. Were the deformities a natural occurrence or were they caused by toxins in the environment?

Ultimately Souder concludes that ecosystems are so complex and the organisms in them so interconnected that it is difficult for scientists to tease out the exact causes of these malformations. It’s likely, however, that the frogs were physically manifesting the unhealthiness of our environment.

As Souder writes:

So frogs are telling us a lot—so much, perhaps, that we cannot fully understand the message. Frogs are succumbing to parasites, to pesticides, to increases in ultraviolet radiation, to global warming. The earth is changing and the frogs are responding.

plague-of-frogs

This book was written in 2000, before the chrytid fungus that is causing massive die-offs of amphibians became so widespread. I do think it’s worth a read, however, if only to remind us that we have to be careful what chemical and toxins we release into the environment because ultimately we don’t really know what the effects will be on wildlife—and on us. We need to listen to what the frogs are telling us.

06/21/09

The Coqui, Pride of Puerto Rico

June is traditionally the month of the Puerto Rican Day parade in New York City, and in other cities around the country, so it’s a good time to celebrate the unofficial symbol of Puerto Rico—the common coqui, a frog species endemic to Puerto Rico. If you click on the video below, you will hear the sound of this frog that makes a ko-kee noise. Imagine a chorus of these frogs.

A friend from Puerto Rico says he remembers being lulled to sleep by the calls of the coqui. After the birds quiet at dusk, the frogs start their night music and sing all night long. A recent exhibit at the Bronx Zoo about the coqui brought a record number of visitors, who no doubt also had memories of being serenaded to sleep by this tiny (one-inch long) tree frog. Only male coquis sing—both to fend off other males and establish their territory and to find a mate. Here’s more info about this beloved island amphibian, whose numbers are declining due to deforestation, among other reasons.

06/21/09

Create a backyard frog pond

Frogs lead double lives. They begin their lives as fish-like tadpoles, breathing with gills as they swim underwater, then metamorphose into their adult form, hopping onto land and breathing with lungs. As adult frogs, they have strong ties to water and most need to remain near water to keep their bodies moist.

So what does this have to do with you? In the past twenty years, habitat loss has been one of the main reasons for the decline in frog populations in the US. The housing boom, in particular, destroyed large areas of natural habitat for wildlife.

It is possible to help out your neighborhood amphibians by creating a frog pond in your backyard. As I am not particularly handy with home projects, I searched the web trying to find an explanation of how to do this that didn’t seem impossible. The best directions I found were on the Loudoun (VA) Wildlife Conservancy site. Although I’m not planning to dig a frog pond in my city backyard, I could imagine following these directions and making this type of pond if I had a large backyard in a more rural area.

Some key points:

  • Be patient. If you build it, the frogs will come…ie, don’t stock the pond with pet store frogs or remove frogs from the wild and relocate them to your pond–that could make matters worse. Non-native species can wreak havoc on local ecosystems. Even native frogs could carry diseases that could cause death in local wild frogs. Just create a good environment for frogs and eventually they might appear.
  • The pond should have sloped sides so that the froglets can emerge from the pond when they are are ready.
  • Plant native plants and include lily pads etc (there are lots of water gardening catalogs).
  • Obviously if you have young children in the area, keep the pond fenced off to prevent accidents.
  • Don’t stock the pond with fish–they’ll eat the tadpoles.
Photo by Laura Regnier (courtesy of savethefrogs.com)

Photo by Laura Regnier (courtesy of www.savethefrogs.com)

06/21/09

Literary Frogs

I worked in children’s book publishing for ten years, and we published A LOT of books with frog characters, among them The Mysterious Tadpole by Steven Kellogg, The Frog Prince, Continued by Jon Scieszka, and A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog by Mercer Mayer, not to mention The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (we published all the Beatrix Potter books). Those are just the few I came up with off the top of my head. I thought I’d catch up on all the recently published froglit, but there are too many new books to list, so I’m reading them all and will report back on my favorites.

It did get me thinking however…the children’s book industry has a vested interest in keeping frogs healthy! So perhaps a portion of the sale of some of these books should go toward saving frogs and other amphibians (after all, there are LOTS of books about salamanders and toads too).

The classic children’s book with amphibian characters is, of course, Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel.

frogandtoad

I was delighted to discover that a new book by Arnold Lobel about frogs and toads has just been published: The Frog and Toads All Sang.

Lobel died in 1987, but his daughter, Adrianne Lobel, recently discovered poems about frogs and toads that her father illustrated with little sketches. Here’s an illustration from the book:

frogs-sang

copyright 2009 by the Estate of Arnold Lobel