Sunday 3 February 2008

Frogs, endangered species?



This is one of my favourite froggy images.
Courtesy of the may 1995 national geographic, photographed by Mark W.Moffett.
He looks like he's about give a speech or take questions!

I've always been fond of frogs.
As a kid I used to collect the frog spawn from the bog and take great delight in watching all the different transformations as they morphed from spawn to tiddly tadpoles, to bigger tadpoles, to tadpole with legs, to tichy frogs with tadpole tails and then..puff.. they'd vanish over night, into thin air.
I don't think I ever succeeded in having an actual frog.
I tried to console myself with talk of the little guys hopping all the way back to the bog to find their mums but with thirteen outdoor cats around I never really fancied their chances.

But now they are in terrible danger as they are being wiped out by chytrid fungus.
A BBC crew has managed to film the Panamanian golden frog in the wild, waving, wrestling and courting, shortly before it became extinct.



You can read all about the frogs and this horrible chytrid fungus here

And then cheer yourself up knowing that at least some of the frogs were saved by a couple of American Frogologists. See below.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My husband and you have something in common Janie, he's always loved frogs and has a small frog collection (not real ones!)It' s very scary how many frogs are disappearing.

janie said...

yes, it is frightening and it's happening so rapidly.
Delighted to hear about another frog fan:)