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The Toad-ally Fun Frog Facts!
Fall, GHS News, Informative December 9, 2021 Comments Off on The Toad-ally Fun Frog Facts!
Written by Alaina Shoopman
Ribbit ribbit! That’s hello in frog talk, just kidding, it isn’t. Today, I’ve come far and wide to spread wonderful facts about our amphibian friends, frogs! Our excellent jumper-pals deserve a round of applause for their hard work. Let’s begin!
Did you know?
Frogs don’t need to drink water, crazy right? Their skin absorbs the water. How can that be? Frogs have a patch on their bellies along with the underside of their thighs. This patch is known as the “drinking patch”.
Frogs can’t swallow food down like we can, instead, they use their eyes to push their food down. You see, when frogs eat their prey, they eat them whole. And they need help pushing their food down or else they’ll choke to death. So, their eyes sink into their mouth and help push their meal down.
There’s been plenty of evidence that shows frogs have been hopping around the earth as long as dinosaurs have! That’s more than 200 million years!
In Egypt, frogs are the symbol of life and even fertility. There’s even a frog-goddess from Egyptian Mythology named Heqet that represents fertility.
Toads are actually frogs too! They’re just called toads because of their warthy dry skin. Along with their shorter hind legs. The word “toad” often describes those types of characteristics.
Frogs actually care for their offspring unlike most mammals. Poison dart frogs lay their eggs on the flooring of forests and urinate on the eggs to keep them fresh and away from predators.
Many frogs can actually change their color! They change colors to hide from various predators, they match from the colors in the area. Their body temperature also changes their color, these frogs use their pigment cells (chromatophores) when changing color. But they fully can’t change their color, they become a darker/lighter color of their original color to match with scenery.
There’s a whopping total of over 6,000 species of frogs, scientists to this day are discovering more.
Asian tree frogs will purposely build nests in trees above a pool of water so when tadpoles hatch, they fall into the pool of water.
Ever wondered why toads had those bulges on their head? There’s a reason for it! They’re called poison glands. Those glands have bufotoxins, a neurotoxin. When a toad is under pressure, they’ll shoot the bufotoxin from their glands, and toads aim for the predator’s eyes or mouth. When a predator eats the bufotoxin, they’ll fall ill or even die from the bufotoxin. It really depends on the amount of bufotoxin that’s ingested.
I hope you learned something new about frogs that you didn’t know about before. Your writer, Alaina Shoopman, signing off for today.
Thanks to our sources: onekindplanet.org and amnh.org for the ribbiting facts
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