We’re happy to feature this guest post by Meghan Bartels from the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project in celebration of leaping frogs. Don’t miss the wonderful song below by Alex Culbreth.
The real purpose of leap day may be to keep the calendar aligned with the seasons, but here at the Panama Amphibian Conservation and Rescue Project, we’d like to believe the day is designed to honor our favorite leapers. To celebrate, we’ve put together some fun facts about frog leaping.
Frog Leaping courtesy Brian Gratwicke & Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project
Not all frogs can leap, or even hop. The desert rain frog (Breviceps macrops) has legs that are too short to hop. Instead, it walks.
Male frogs of the genus Pipa are known to defend their territory by jumping at and then wrestling other males.
The New Guinea bush frog (Asterophrys turpicola) takes jump attacks one step further: before it jumps at a strange frog, it inflates itself and shows off its blue tongue.
Stumpffia tridactyla are normally slow-moving critters, but when they’re startled they can abruptly jump up to 8 inches. That doesn’t sound very far, but these little guys are less than half an inch long!
The Fuji tree frog (Platymantis vitiensis) may be the leaping stuntman of the frog world. Each time it leaps, it twists in the air—sometimes even 180 degrees—to throw predators off its trail.
The Larut torrent frog (Amolops larutensis) gets its name from a nifty leaping trick: it can jump into a fast-moving stream and back to its usual perch, the underside of a rock, without being affected by the current.
Similarly, the parachuting red-eyed leaf frog (Agalychnis saltator) gets its name because it speeds to mating opportunities by jumping from trees with finger-and toe-webbing spread wide.
The record for longest jump by an American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) recorded in a scientific paper is a little over 4 feet. But scientists who went to the Calaveras County Fair, which Mark Twain’s short story made famous for frog jumping, found that more than half the competitors bested that record—and one jumped more than 7 feet in one leap!
The Guinness Book of World Records doesn’t include any frogs for their leaping ability. But it does track human performance in frog jumping (jumping while holding one’s toes). There are records listed for the longest frog jump and the fastest frog jumping over 10 and 100 meters.
In honor of leap day celebrations being coordinated globally by Amphibian Ark, the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project made this video for a frog song written by Alex Culbreth.
At Frogs Are Green, we’ve always been interested in the interconnections between frogs and the Earth. How is climate change affecting amphibian populations? Are we listening to what frogs are telling us about the health of our planet?
Recently, we read an intriguing article in the Deccan Herald (India), about how a team of scientists in India are literally listening to frogs to understand the effect of climate change on amphibian populations.
Three scientists, K.S. Seshadri with T. Ganesh, and S. Devy, were doing research 100 feet above the ground in the canopy of the evergreen forest in the Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve. While getting drenched with rain, they heard a cacophony of frog songs. Intrigued by the songs that the rains triggered, they initiated a program to study frog calls to both monitor populations and to study the affect of climate change on frogs.
Volunteer examines the monkey-proof enclosure for equipment to record frog calls. Photo credit: K. S. Seshadri
Amphibian Meterologists
Frogs can tell us a lot about the weather. Their skin is extremely thin and sensitive; they respond to even small changes in atmospheric moisture and temperature. The scientists reasoned that an analysis of sound recordings, combined with readings from climate data loggers, could help improve our understanding of the impact of climate change.
Climate change seems to underlie many of the threats facing frogs worldwide. By monitoring the frog calls, an activity calendar for each of the indicator species can be made. This long-term monitoring will be invaluable in understanding the greater impact of climate change and also might help to save frog species.
Work station studying frog calls, high up in the forest canopy. Photo credit K. S. Seshadri
As the Deccan Herald put it: “Will the croak alarm finally wake us from our ignorant slumber? The answer lies in the future.”
When was your organization founded? Please tell us a bit about its mission, goals…
Save the Frogs is the first and only public charity devoted to amphibians. It was founded in May 2008. Our mission is to save and protect amphibians, as well as to respect and appreciate nature and wildlife.
I founded Save the Frogs because frogs were rapidly disappearing around the world. About one-third of amphibians are on the verge of extinction. At least 2,000 species are threatened and if nothing is done, will likely go extinct. Most of the work previous to Save the Frogs was done by scientists helping amphibians, but educating the public about the issue is also very important.
Save the Frogs has education programs and works to get laws in place, for example, to get frogs legs out of restaurants, provide schools with alternatives to dissecting frogs, and prevent non-native frogs from being imported.
The biggest thing is environmental education so I created Save the Frogs Day, an event which comes around each year. This April 28th will be the 4th annual Save the Frogs Day and there will be 200 events in 30 countries, which will top last year’s 143 events in 21 countries.
The events bring awareness around the world, especially on that particular day and it receives significant publicity in the media.
What is your educational background and what lead to creating this organization?
I was always interested math and science and studied mechanical engineering as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, but soon realized I wanted to pursue environmental science. I went back to school to study biology in preparation for graduate school.
I spent a summer in Hawaii volunteering with PhD students who were studying birds. It was then that I knew environmental science was my path. I loved hanging out at streams, so thought about what types of animals live in streams and then found out that frogs were disappearing. I thought frogs would be great to study for my PhD, so I went to Australia and came across Mark Hero in South East Queensland, who became my supervisor. I studied frogs, and the disease, chytrid fungus, which is driving amphibians to extinction.
I finished my PhD, came back to the United States and founded Save the Frogs. I love my work because it’s a combination of communicating awareness, educating the public and science.
What are some challenges you have faced and how did you deal with them?
The first challenge was funding, because we founded in 2008 during the economic recession. Raising funds for a non-profit is hard in the best of times, plus saving frogs is still somewhat of an obscure topic. Most people still don’t know why we should protect frogs.
Save the Frogs works hard on awareness by using the web and speaking to the public directly.
I try to get publicity through newspapers and for-profit corporations involved. Some of them have practices that are harmful to the environment. Many companies when approached don’t necessarily care about what they are doing and only care about making money.
At least one billion frogs are taken out of the environment for use as food in restaurants (frogs legs) and farm-raised frogs carry diseases and if you approach restaurants and ask them to stop selling them, they only see it as a monetary loss.
I have and will continue to approach tech firms in nearby in Silicon Valley for funding. Many of them have no environmental program.
How is climate change effecting amphibians?
Climate change is a huge problem, so it’s good that it gets a lot of attention. We need more people in the government looking seriously at climate change and what to do about it. It’s very important to amphibians because they are very connected to precipitation levels.
“Amphibian” means two lives, one on land and one in the water. Frogs either lay their eggs in water or in leaf litter and the ones who are not in the water are in cloud forests in tropical countries. As the temperature rises, the cloud level rises and the leaf litter dries up. This means that the frogs must continually move up and eventually will run out of space. Many of the frog species live on a particular mountain and only that mountain, so if something happens to that species it can go extinct.
It’s not just tropical forests that are in trouble, Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. has had droughts. About one fourth of the ponds have started to dry up and many frog species are on the decline.
Save the Frogs had five posters up in airports around the country and the one in O’Hare is still up and has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people.
How do you reach your targeted audience? Is it through your website, advertising or social media or another route? Which is most effective and why?
The best way I can reach people is through our Save the Frogs website which has helped make it a worldwide organization. Our e-newsletter is also a great tool because whenever we need help and send it out, we can reach tens of thousands of people. We recently sent out an email with a free download of “The Wild World of Frogs” and it got 40,000 downloads in the first day! Many of those downloads were from friends forwarding the newsletter to their friends.
We create a variety of flyers people can post around their towns. Most things we do are free and up on our website and if you give people the tools they will help spread the word.
Some of the other ways we reach people is through our Facebook page with frequent updates, as well as through Twitter.
I give live presentations and did 65 this year. I believe you can get more people involved by interacting with them face-to-face. I’m trying to get more teachers involved and Save the Frogs Day on April 28 is a great way and to get lots of people talking about it.
What can people do to help?
There are lots of ways to help Save the Frogs! Our website has over 250 pages of information. I feel that educating yourself on the issues is the first step and then subscribing to our newsletter to stay informed.
Learning how you can change your ecological footprint is a great way to help. Everything you do effects the environment.
There are lots of ways to volunteer and many things can be done through the internet so you can be from anywhere! There is a form on our website you can fill out. We have various campaigns and also need help writing letters to the government, for example, the campaign to ban Atrazine. Visit our “take action” page.
Save the Frogs is a 5013C public charity and has a wish list of things we need which is also posted on our website.
Tell us about your events around the world and some of the campaigns you have started.
Save the Frogs is an international organization because amphibians are disappearing all over the world. A few years ago I was asked down to Panama to give a five day talk on molecular biology and also taught the scientists there how to detect the chytrid fungus disease. If you cannot detect the disease, how can you do any research on it. The materials and information is available on the Save the Frogs website. “QPC” is the technique for detecting the disease and the materials have been downloaded by scientists in over 30 countries.
Last year I got invited to Korea and was the representative for the 1st Amphibian International Symposium. I traveled around Korea for 10 days doing environmental work. Seeing what types of problems they had, coming up with solutions and giving presentations to communities, groups and schools. We have applied for a $50,000 grant that would go to helping Korea’s amphibians.
In September, 2011 I spent a month in Ghana and helped them start Save the Frogs Ghana. We are registering it as a NGO with the government of Ghana. It will be an independent Save the Frogs working on it’s own. We have written a proposal to help the Squeaker Frog (Arthroleptidae: Arthroleptis) and also to make the Atewa Hills a national park. We are trying to save the Togo Slippery Frog (Conraua derooi) which lives in only two streams and are threatened by mining. They are a fully aquatic frog and swim as fast as a fish.
What is in the works for the future?
Save the Frogs is coming to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in March 2012. I will be looking for schools and community groups for presentations.
Save the Frogs Day is April 28th and we have a 5k race planned in Seattle and another event in San Francisco. There will be “Ban Atrazine” rallies and we will be raising awareness about it.
New campaigns include a petition to Governor Gerry Brown to stop the importation of American Bullfrogs. About 3 million are imported to the state of California each year. Being native to the east coast, when they come to California, they eat the native wildlife and they are primarily for pets, dissection and frogs legs in restaurants. They carry the chytrid fungus so are spreading the disease.
Nathan’s Famous is now selling frogs legs and I want to get this to stop. The executive and CEOs have refused to address the issue. They need to take some environmental responsibility.
Helping Save the Frogs Ghana
Ghana is a poor country and frogs are in trouble because of illegal foresting. There are now programs in place to teach mushroom farming and bee keeping which can change a family’s life. We will be working to get the Atewa Hills a national park.
To learn more about Save the Frogs visit the links below:
The amphibian crisis is an environmental issue that hasn’t really hit the mainstream yet. Most people we talk to are surprised to hear that an entire class of animals is in deep trouble, with one-third of amphibian species facing extinction. So we were very happy when Rachel Maddow did a piece two weeks ago on her show about the newly discovered Hula painted frog (Discoglossus nigriventer) (see video below).
The frog was discovered inIsrael’s Lake Hula, one of the world’s oldest documented lakes, which provided fertile hunting and fishing grounds for humans for tens of thousands of years.
In the early 1950s, the lake and surrounding marshes were drained as a way of tackling malaria. But the costs for doing this were high. Among other environmental problems, draining the lake led to the near extinction of an entire ecosystem and the unique endemic fauna of the lake, including the Hula painted frog. Ironically, species such as the painted frog feed on mosquitoes that carry malaria.
Concern over the draining of Hula grew among the people of Israel, leading to the formation of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and a movement to reflood the Hula Valley. It took 40 years for the protesters’ voices to be heard, but in the mid 1990s, parts of the valley were reflooded.
While much of the ecosystem was restored, not all species re-appeared and it was believed to be too late for the Hula painted frog; the species was declared extinct in 1996 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The frog became a poignant symbol for extinction in Israel.
Only three adult Hula painted frogs had ever been found. Two of these were collected into captivity in the 1940s, but the larger one ate the smaller one, leaving just one specimen to remember the species by.
The enigmatic frog was selected as one of the “top ten” species during the Search for Lost Frogs last year, highlighting the global importance of this species. It was lost but not forgotten.
Recently, however, Nature and Parks Authority warden Yoram Malka was conducting his routine patrol of the Hula Nature Reserve when something jumped from under him. He lunged after it and caught it: he was holding in his hand the first Hula painted frog seen since the 1950s.
To quote the CI site:
This rediscovery is the icing on the cake of what is a major victory for conservation in Israel: the restoration of a rare and valuable ecosystem. Because Israel has given the Hula Valley a second chance to thrive, the Hula frog has gone from being a symbol of extinction to a symbol of resilience.
Mazel tov, Dr. Moore! And thanks, Rachel, for reporting the story.
At Frogs Are Green, we always enjoy the stories of newly discovered frog species and the re-discovery of frog species thought to be extinct. These stories counterbalance some of the less optimistic news stories about amphibians these days.
Recently in India, twelve new frog species were discovered, and three species were rediscovered. Scientists with Global Wildlife Conservation, led by biologist Sathyabhama Das Biju of the University of Delhi, spent years searching at night in the forests of Western Ghats, in Kerala, listening for frog calls.
Wayand Night Frog. Photo by Sathyabhama Das Biju/Global Wildlife Conservation from NationalGeographic.com
Some of the newly discovered frogs include:
The Meowing Night Frog (Nyctibatrachus poocha): Its croak sounds more like a cat than a frog.
The Jog’s Night Frog (Nyctibatrachus jog): Both males and females look after the eggs.
The Wayanad Night Frog (Nyctibatrachus grandis): It grows to about the size of a baseball and leaps from rock to rock.
The Coorg night frog (Nyctibatrachus sanctipalustris): This frog was described 91 years ago and was thought to be extinct, but has now been rediscovered.
The discoveries were published in the latest issue of international taxonomy journal Zootaxa, bringing the known number of frog species in India to 336.
Many of the newly found frogs in India are rare and are living in just a single area and so are especially vulnerable and will need rigorous protection. But most conservation in India is focused on the two most charismatic animals – the elephant and the tiger. According to Dr. Biju, there is little interest in amphibians, not much funding, and frog research is not easy.
In some parts of India, however, frogs are revered. They symbolize rain and prosperity and the end of a drought. We hope that these amazing amphibians are similarly revered and get the protection they need.
To see a slideshow of the frogs on Huffington Post, click here.
Thank you to Frogs Are Green friend Dana Breaux Kennedy for pointing us to the article about the newly discovered frogs in India.
I imagine in the early days of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg was not thinking about how his innovative new social networking site might help wildlife. But being globally connected by social media can speed the spread of information and help in conservation efforts.
Because up to one-third of all amphibians are endangered and many species are on the brink of extinction, it makes sense to take advantage of the incredible power of social media to help amphibian conservation efforts in an efficient and cost-effective way.
We’ve recently learned about a new project called The Global Amphibian Blitz , an on-line information sharing hub for non-professional naturalists and biologists to track and record sightings of amphibians around the world. This information will then help professional researchers to document and determine where conservation efforts are most needed. It also seems to be a great way for those who care about frogs and other amphibians to connect with each other.
If you’re an amateur herpetologist, please consider becoming a part of the Global Amphibian Blitz. The YouTube video below explains how to participate in the project:
