Frogs

What are frogs? What is their life cycle? How do they mate and lay eggs? What are the new types of frogs, and why do they keep appearing? How long have frogs existed on our planet.

Frogs are amphibians. That means their young live in the water and as they grow up they will change to live on land and instead of gills, they will use lungs to breathe. A frog’s life is started out as an egg. Once the egg hatches, a tadpole emerges. The tadpole feeds on algae on the rocks. The tadpole will keep growing and changing and eventually it will grow legs; after its legs have finished growing, they will start to grow arms and the tadpole will slowly lose its tale. The tadpole frog will be able to go on land and go into the water. Another thing that changed in this process is that when the frog was born, it used its gills to breathe. And then when it grows up, it will use lungs to breathe.  

Frogs eat insects, sometimes snails and worms; the bigger species can eat lizards and even sometimes they eat other small fish. They help us make sure that there are not too many flies in our world, just like spiders and chameleons do. Most people think that frogs chew their food but they don’t, just like snakes, alligators and komodo dragons. Frogs wait patiently for their prey. When they see it, the frog will unroll a long sticky tongue and catch their prey. Sometimes when frogs eat fireflies they will glow and they will look like a light bulb that is jumping around in the dark!

When frogs grow older they will have to mate and lay more eggs. The male has to find the female and mate with her. When the two mate, the female will lay eggs. In some species, such as the African reed frogs, Hyperolius viridiflavus ommatostictus, males have the ability to turn themselves into female frogs and mate with itself and lay new eggs! Other animals and plants can also switch their gender: shrimp and orchids do it, and even some tropical fish do it too. But it’s not only the males who can do that. Female frogs can also change their gender and successfully breed. The scientific name for frogs is anura so if you ever see the word anura, just know that means ‘without tail’ in Latin.

In the future I think there will be more frogs than before because in a book called National Geographic Kids, 2013 I heard that some extinct frog species were coming back to life, and in fact last year we found a new species of frogs that was once mixed as a leopard frog and in 2010 there was a new frog species that could make its croak echo from afar, so it could confuse its predators. Some scientist have said that people have found frogs with more than 4 legs and the common frogs are disappearing

And the rare frogs or extinct frogs are coming back! Scientists think that this might be because frogs breathe and drink with their skin, so they have to keep their skin damp. Because fertilizer and pesticides affect their lives, and because frog skin is very sensitive, it is important to note that frogs act as harbingers for our future. So if there is a major change in our planet, frogs will be the first to show it.