At this time of year, we’d like to stop and say thank you to all the visitors we’ve had, and to those who’ve joined our cause.
While you’re shopping for loved ones in the next week or so, we hope you’ll remember all the great organizations that need your help in this challenging economic climate.
In case you’re planning a holiday visit to “the City” (what we locals call Manhattan), we want to remind you to go see the exhibit Frogs: A Chorus of Colors at the American Museum of Natural History before it closes January 3. This traveling exhibit from Clyde Peelings Reptiland is fun and informative, even for the youngest kids. The 200 live frogs are in realistic natural habitats, complete with rock ledges, waterfalls, and live plants. Some of the frogs, especially the poison dart frogs, are amazingly colorful and look like little jewels.
Susan visited the exhibit again with her family and took some photographs of the frogs. I enjoyed the exhibit so much, I’m also going again before the frogs leave New York City.
Argentine Horned Frog at the AMNH, photo by Susan Newman
We received a behind-the-scenes video from the museum of the feeding and prepping of the frogs:
The exhibit is traveling to MUZEO in Anaheim, California, in February. If you’re planning a trip to Disneyland, definitely take a detour and see the frogs, too!
We have a lot to be grateful for at FROGS ARE GREEN. We’ve received over 10,000 visitors since we started the blog back in May. We are so grateful for your comments and for your participation in our blog.
As a token of our thanks, Susan designed a poster of our mascot, the Red-Eyed Tree Frog, that you can download and print out for FREE (in three different sizes). We hope you enjoy it and will put up a copy at your home, school, or office to spread the message about our amphibian friends.
Happy Holidays!
Don’t forget to check our galleries of our photo contest photos, wonderful frog art from kids, and photos of wild backyards! (Click on the pictures in the right column of the blog. Feel free to send us your pictures to be included, too!)
Click here and it will take you to the download page.
This past Sunday, my husband and I went for long hike in Harriman State Park in New York. In late March and early April, the sound of the spring peepers is deafening. But the other day we heard only one or two peepers. I did a little research to find out what happens to the peepers in the fall and winter. What exactly do they do from now until early spring?
Wood Frog
Frogs and toads have evolved strategies to survive freezing temperatures. Wood frogs and spring peepers actually become a “frogsicle,” as Larry Lyons explains in his article, “All the Frogs Will Soon be Frogsicles” in the Niles (MI) Daily Star. The frogs will soon find a place under the leaf litter or in a crack in a log or rock to settle for their winter nap. They’ll slowly begin to freeze as soon as temperatures reach the freezing point. The frog’s blood stops flowing, its lungs, heart and muscles stop functioning, and ice fills the body cavity. As Niles writes, “We now have a frogsicle in suspended animation.”
About 65% of the frog is frozen. It manufactures large amounts of blood sugar that serve as anti-freeze, preventing ice damage to its organs. When spring temperatures are consistently above freezing, they begin to thaw out and break out in a chorus of frog calls (as mating season begins).
What about other frogs and toads? Toads dig a burrow under the frost line, where they go into a mild state of hibernation. Their metabolism slows down and they no longer need food or water. Aquatic frogs such as green frogs go into what’s called a state of torpor. They descend to oxygen rich deep water, find a hiding place, and don’t move around much until the spring comes.
Perhaps we are more like animals than we care to admit. I know I slow down in late fall and hibernate until spring!
We received a new video from the Prince’s Rainforests Project of Sting singing “Message in a Bottle,” his own personal SOS to the world about the destruction of the rainforests. The Prince’s Rainforest SOS Campaign is their final push to ensure that the call for emergency action to protect rainforests is heard by those who have the power to make change happen. It is particularly directed toward world leaders before the forthcoming global climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
While Sting and the frog are cute, his message is serious—and it is heartbreaking to see the trees cut down. Check out the Prince’s site to find out ways that you can become involved and spread the message!
In the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve of Costa Rica, there were once so many harlequin frog species (Atelopus) that it was hard not to step on them when walking alongside streams. But during the 1980s and 1990s, most of these frogs vanished due to deadly infectious diseases brought on by changing water and air temperatures.
Research done in Costa Rica shows that global warming makes clouds form higher above the forests where they cannot bring as much moisture to the ecosystems below. Dry spells are getting longer and in turn, many species are disappearing. Rising temperatures also shrink the cloud forests, which forces species to live closer together, spreading fungal diseases. The harlequin frog is on its way to extinction.
As J. Alan Pounds, research scientist at Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, has said on the Eco Preservation Society site:
Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger. Global warming is wreaking havoc on amphibians and will cause staggering losses of biodiversity if we don’t do something fast.
A small population of Harlequin Frogs was discovered about 6 years ago in the Rainmaker Preserve in Costa Rica, one of the last remnants of primary rainforest in the Central Pacific.
To get some idea of the incredible diversity of wildlife in the Rainmaker Preserve (which can be visited on eco-tours) check out this video :
Here is more information about the cloud forest of Costa Rica from the Monteverde Conservation League.
I am passing along a Care2 petition to urge Costa Rica’s Ambassador Escalante to do everything in his power to save this colorful little frog, along with many other endangered species affected by climate change.
