Flurries and furries
Design A Frog
There are over 5,000 species of frogs worldwide—more than 100 in North America alone. Frogs show a tremendous amount of biodiversity in their calls, their coloration, their body type, and their behaviors. These amazing frog adaptations have helped them survive in habitats all over the world.
In this activity, you'll learn all about the ways frogs adapt to their surroundings and then design your own frog species.
Frogs and toads of Madre de Dios. Source: Shutterstock Materials Start With A Habitat Before you go much further, there is something very important you need to know: All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. For this activity, you can design either, but it's important to know the difference. Frogs often have moist, slimy, smooth skin; toads usually have drier, warty skin. As a result, frogs typically live in or near water, such as lakes, ponds, and streams, while toads spend more time on land because their skin is more waterproof. Toads still need moisture, just not as much as frogs. Toads and frogs have evolved over time to be adapted to their habitats.
Frogs and toads live all over the world except Antarctica and Greenland. They are most commonly found in warm, wet habitats. Frogs and toads are often found in woodlands, rainforests, and aquatic areas, but some species make their homes in deserts and even in tundra north of the Arctic Circle!
Global Amphibian Species Richness Map of where amphibians (including frogs) are found worldwide. Source: AmphibiaWeb When you design a frog or toad, where it lives should determine many of its characteristics–a frog should be well-adapted to its habitat. For example, some frogs and toads live in arid climates, like deserts. They dig deep in the dirt or sand to stay moist. Their slimy mucus can harden to protect them from getting too dry.
Use the provided presentation or other resources to research different types of frogs. Think about these questions as you do:
Many species of frogs and toads have colorings that match their surroundings. This camouflage helps them hide from predators. Some frogs and toads are poisonous or unpleasant tasting. Their skin color may be brightly colored to deter predators. Other frogs may have flash markings—bright markings on their thighs—that startle predators when they jump and move. Frogs and toads may also have stripes along their backs, brightly colored bellies, blotches and spots, or eye masks. These markings help frogs survive in their habitat and help people identify different species.
Frogs come in many sizes and shapes, from the size of your fingertip to the size of a small cat! Toads tend to have broader bodies, with back legs that are shorter than their bodies. Frogs tend to have slimmer, longer bodies and legs longer than their head and body combined. A frog snout (nose) can be rounded or pointed. They also have two nostrils on the top of their head by the mouth. Some frogs have parotid glands on their back, neck, or shoulders. These glands secrete a toxin to deter predators. Every feature gives the frog an advantage in its habitat.
Frog feet are very adapted to where the frog lives and how it interacts with its habitat. Arboreal frogs that live in trees often have wide sticky toe pads or discs on long fingers that can wrap around branches and vegetation. Aquatic frogs that live in the water often have webbing between the toes, most often on their back feet, to help them swim. Terrestrial frogs that live on the ground or that burrow have strong fingers and rough, bumpy feet that help them dig and crawl. Some frogs have highly specialized claws or claw-like toes, too. Others have spades—small, sharp bonelike protrusions on their back feet—that help with digging.
Frog Habitats can include rainforests, woodlands, a pond, and a desert. Image source: Canva.
Note the smooth-skinned frogs and bumpy-skinned toads. Remember: All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. Image source: Canva.
Some frogs hide from predators with camouflage, while others are brightly colored as a warning. Image source: Canva.
Frog bodies differ too. Frogs tend to have long legs and narrow bodies, while toads have broad bodies and shorter legs. Image source: Canva.
Frog hands and feet are highly adapted for where they live, from sticky toe pads for tree climbers to webbed feet for swimmers. Image source: Canva.
Frog pupils, the tympanum, and a frog mouth with teeth so tiny you can't see them. Image source: Canva.
Frogs expand their vocal sacs to create resonance for their calls. Image source: Canva. Diagram from Gerhardt HC and Huber F (2002) Acoustic Communication in Insects and Anurans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Frog pupils come in seven shapes! Horizontal slits are the most common, but they may also be vertical slits, diamonds, circles, triangles, fans, and inverted fans. Iris color differs too. Scientists don't yet know how these differences affect the frog's eyesight, but they know that a frog's bulging eyes on top of their heads help them see in front, to the sides, and behind them.
Frog ears are very different from ours. Just behind the eyes, they have a round tympanum or tympanic membrane, which is a bit like our eardrum. This external membrane sends sound waves to the frog's inner ear, which is protected from water. The size of the tympanum varies by frog species but can be very helpful in identifying their species.
Frogs take in air through their nostrils and mouths into their lungs, then push the air back out over vocal cords that vibrate in the larynx, much as we do. But frogs also have a flexible membrane called a vocal sac that makes the sound louder and travel further. Frogs use muscles to move the air back and forth between the lungs and vocal sac, creating resonance and amplifying the sound.
Not all frogs have teeth, but many have tiny maxillary teeth along the top jaw. They may also have bony vomerine teeth on top of their mouth behind the ridge of their upper jaw. Just one frog—Guenther's marsupial frog—has dentary teeth, which are teeth on the bottom jaw. A few species of frogs have fang-like projections on the bottom jaw called odontoids. Frogs don't use their teeth to chew. They use them to catch and hold onto insects, snails, slugs, or worms that they catch with their long, sticky tongues and swallow whole. Toads have no teeth at all.
Look through the examples provided in the presentation or other resources. Think about these questions as you plan your frog design:
Use the Design A Frog Worksheet to plan your frog. Where will it live? What does it look like? How has it adapted to its environment? Think about the area where you live. Can you design a frog to live there? Or maybe you'd like to design a frog to live in a rainforest or a city park or on Mars! Whatever you decide, make sure that its body will help it be successful in its habitat.
Use your worksheet to answer these questions as you design your frog:
Next sketch of your frog. Try drawing it from different sides—top, bottom, side, front. Point out special features like its pupils, teeth, or the pattern on its skin. How big is your frog? Mark its size on the sketch or draw a reference image to show its size. Consider its body type, legs, feet, eyes, skin, and other features. Your drawing doesn't have to be perfect. It's there to give others an idea of what you have designed.
A completed Design a Frog activity worksheet and model. Credit: Sandy Roberts Once you are done, create a 3-dimensional model of your frog. Use clay (or other craft materials) to build your frog model. As you mold your amphibian, think about where it lives and how its body will help it survive. In the example above, a student decided to create a poisonous frog that has purple and blue warning colors. It's adapted to living in the clouds and has wings like a hummingbird to help it move around, rather than developing long, strong legs. What story does your frog model tell?
Try hiding your frog in the real world. Does its camouflage protect it from predators or warn them to stay away? Take pictures of your frog and share them!
This frog is adapted to have long claws on its feet to help with digging.
This frog is adapted to mimic features, like coloring, of an alligator
This frog has very large eyes to help it see.
This frog is poisonous and hides among fruit.
This pastel-colored frog is meant to blend into sandy beaches.
This dragon-inspired frog has an extra long tongue to catch food and warning coloration.
This rainforest frog is adapted to have very long legs for climbing.
This frog is adapted to live in a toilet!
Like other amphibians, frogs and toads have thin skin that is permeable, allowing gasses like oxygen, and liquids like water, to pass through. That helps frogs breathe underwater. They can absorb oxygen through their skin and into their blood vessels, even when they're hibernating. However, this also makes them very sensitive to water loss, changes in their environment, and environmental pollution.
Declining frog populations are usually an early sign that something is wrong within an ecosystem. Frogs are a keystone species that affects the lives of many other organisms. For example, frogs eat lots of insects, but they are also a food source for birds. Fewer frogs in an area will affect both the insect and bird populations, which can cause a chain reaction throughout the ecosystem. Researchers keep a close eye on how many and what types of frogs and toads there are in critical habitats–frogs are indicators of the health of our environment.
And you can help! Through programs like FrogWatch, HerpMapper, and the Global Amphibian BioBlitz, you can participate in crowd science efforts to track frog species and report that data back to scientists. But first, you need to become learn a bit about frogs, so that you can identify the frogs you find. Check out the "Frog Introduction" below, a guide from the folks at the frog monitoring program, FrogWatch USA:
Learn the basics about frogs and how you can help scientists track their health from Carrie Basset of FrogWatchUSA. This recording is part of a series of webinars on Citizen Science hosted by Science Friday in April 2023.
As we discussed above, frogs have a variety of sounds they can make. These calls indicate distress when there is danger or advertise a desire for a mate. Every frog species has unique calls. Most often, males call at night to find a female. Females listen and follow the sound. You can learn what frogs live near you by learning their calls. Listen to frog sounds from FrogWatch and try to identify the frogs in your area.
Want more crowd science opportunities? Visit our 2023 Citizen Science page for additional projects and recordings of the series of webinars we did with SciStarter. SciStarter has a great projects finder to help you locate volunteer opportunities that match topics you're curious or concerned about. There's something for everyone!
European green tree frog during the night, calling for a mate. Source: Shutterstock Related Segment The Complex Calls Of City-Living Frogs Additional Resources Add to your library and discover the amazing diversity of frogs and toads!
Want to get involved with frog and amphibian Citizen Science? Great! It's a wonderful way to learn more about the world around you while also helping researchers by collecting important information. Here are some excellent projects:
NGSS StandardsCreditsLesson and worksheet by Sandy Roberts.Copyediting by Jason Rosenberg and Ariel Zych.Digital Production by Sandy Roberts.
Educator's Toolbox Meet the Writer About Sandy Roberts @KaleidoscopeSciSandy Roberts is Science Friday's Education Program Manager, where she creates learning resources and experiences to advance STEM equity in all learning environments. Lately, she's been playing with origami circuits and trying to perfect a gluten-free sourdough recipe.
Fruitarian Frogs May Be Doing Flowers A Favor
On warm evenings near Rio de Janeiro, you might find milk fruit trees covered in brownish-orange frogs. While many frogs eat insects, the tree frog species Xenohyla truncata has a taste for the pulp of bulbous fruits and the nectar in the tree's flowers.
As they seek that nectar, the frogs dunk their entire bodies into the plant's flowers, only their butts sticking out. When they emerge, pollen gets stuck to their heads and backs. Then they hop off, potentially transporting the pollen from their previous stop at the tropical buffet into the next milk fruit flower they encounter.
In other words, the frogs may disperse the plant's seeds and pollinate its flowers — which would be the first time this has been seen in an amphibian.
"That's completely, completely new, till now, nobody saw them actually doing that," said Luís Felipe Toledo, head of the Amphibians Natural History Lab at the University of Campinas in Brazil and an author of a study published last month in the journal Food Webs suggesting the existence of this ecological relationship between frog and flowering tree.
"This is a very exciting and intriguing first observation," said Ruth Cozien, an expert on plant-animal interactions at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa who was not involved in the study. She said more observations were needed to confirm pollination, but added that the team's preliminary evidence was "incredible" and "extremely valuable for emphasizing what we can still find if we just look."
Most frogs are carnivorous, only accidentally snacking on vegetation when it gets in the way while they're hunting for more critters. But earlier this century, scientists noticed traces of plants in the guts of specimens of Xenohyla truncata, known also as Izecksohn's Brazilian tree frog. Their examinations suggested the species intentionally and often eats fruits, leaves and flowers, and only seldom preys on insects.
But this behavior was never documented in the wild.
Enter Dr. Toledo's team, which was performing research in the Restinga forests of eastern Brazil when, at dusk, they stumbled upon plant-loving frogs in action. Much to their surprise, two frogs were spending five to 15 minutes lapping up nectar from inside the bell-shaped flowers.
Because one of the frogs surfaced from its flowery snack clad in pollen, Dr. Toledo said, the team hypothesized that it was "actually very likely" that the species aids milk fruit tree pollination — accidentally taking pollen from flower to flower and causing reproduction — something amphibians weren't thought to perform. This could also happen with other flowers of similar shapes. In fact, recordings the team made that night show frogs also slurping on nectar from alien bearded irises.
Confirming the discovery could add an amphibian to the surprisingly diverse list of recently discovered pollinators — there are pollinating rats, cockroaches and even lizards. The plethora of pollinators could push the limits of what we understand about relationships between animals and their environment.
But more observations are needed to say the frogs really are pollinating plants.
"We cannot say that these frogs are actually pollinators," said Felipe Amorim, a pollination ecologist at São Paulo State University who was not involved in the research. "They are flower visitors, they are flower-visitor frogs. We have a lot to learn about this novel interaction."
For instance, the mucus secreted by the frog's skin needs to be tested to confirm it doesn't spoil the pollen before it gets to its destination. Scientists also need to work out whether the pollen is ever delivered to other flowers and if it does successfully fertilize and germinate them. It's also still unclear why this frog species has developed a liking for flora over fauna in the first place.
As both Xenohyla truncata and the Brazilian milk fruit tree are endangered species, understanding the intricacies of their relationship is imperative for their conservation.
"We are almost losing this kind of special, unique and extraordinary interaction before it can be found," Dr. Amorim said. "When you lose ecological interactions, it prevents us from discovering many different things about ecosystem functioning in general."
Green Teens Plan Plant Sale For May 11
HULL—The green thumbs are bringing in the green for the greenhouse at Boyden-Hull High School.
The school's annual plant sale will be back 8:15 a.M.-3 p.M. Thursday, May 11. The crop science class and FFA will be selling the fruits and vegetables of their labor out of the garage across First Street from the 7-12 school in Hull.
Seeds started at Boyden-Hull include standard school options as well as produce less common such as asparagus and watermelon. The event also is just in time for Mother's Day flowers.
"We have as much stuff in there as we possibly can," Jacob Van Der Wilt said.
He is the agriculture teacher and FFA adviser.
A member of the Boyden-Hull Class of 2016, Van Der Wilt has been on a mission to revamp the greenhouse activities since taking the job last school year.
"They stopped using it around the COVID time. After that, they didn't start up with it again just because there was upkeep that needed to be done," he said.
While Van Der Wilt has helped lead the way, he said students have taken most of the initiative. The crop science class, which has 11 students, does most of the work during the school year. FFA members maintain it in the summer.
A cauliflower plant grows in greenhouse at Boyden-Hull High School in Hull. Agriculture students will be running a plant sale to fund their activities during the school day Thursday, May 11.
Elijah Helton ehelton@iowainformation.ComHe said it is something the young agriculturalists are passionate about.
"The buy-in with the kids working in there is really good," Van Der Wilt said.
The instructor added that many students like to spend time in the greenhouse outside of classroom hours just to sit and enjoy the peaceful place.
There's just one problem: There isn't enough room.
The squashed, sometimes sweaty space is tacked onto the back of the garage where the plant sale will be. Almost every inch of shelf room is occupied by pots and supplies.
Van Der Wilt said a long-term goal for his program — hopefully achieved within the next few years — is a new greenhouse with double the area.
"We could have a space where we could sit in there and have class and you're taking in all the sights and the scents," he said. "It's uplifting. You feel good especially after however many months of being absolutely slammed with snow."
He said funding should not be an issue when the time comes, but he wants to establish the small-scale growing operation for a couple more years. The group now may be passionate about trying new plants and racking up sales, but the next batch could want to focus on a different ag activity.
"You don't want to get too big for what you can actually handle. I think we can go out full blast right away, just jump at it, but there's a definite potential of falling on our faces," Van Der Wilt said. "Our growth is steady for what we're ready for. We're equipped for different things."
Teacher Jacob Van Der Wilt tends to a cucumber seedling at Boyden-Hull High School. He and his crop science students will run a plant sale Thursday, May 11, in Hull.
Elijah Helton ehelton@iowainformation.ComLeftovers will not go to waste after the May 11 market. The class donates excess produce to the school kitchen to be used for student lunches while supplies last. Hull also has a community garden, where some of the nonedible seedlings find new roots.
Van Der Wilt said the budding regrowth of the greenhouse is exemplary of the foundation Boyden-Hull has in agricultural learning. Just for the plant sale, there has been crossover with the school's business class to advertise it.
"There's a lot that the kids want to do. You want to have buy-in from the kids that are in the program but you're promoting it to the other students, the younger students. This is what we do. This is what our group does. That can bring them in and get them interested." Van Der Wilt said.
"At the core, FFA is driving kids to be good leaders. It really puts a spotlight on them for doing those things. If the kids don't want to do it, we don't do it. It's all because the kids think there's value to it and want to do it. That's why we approach things that way. It's giving back, which is always a good thing."
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