{"id":1551,"date":"2015-03-23T09:34:57","date_gmt":"2015-03-22T20:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2015\/03\/the_sonorous_war_cry_of_a_very_angry_frog\/"},"modified":"2015-03-23T09:34:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-22T20:34:57","slug":"the-sonorous-war-cry-of-a-very-angry-frog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2015\/03\/the-sonorous-war-cry-of-a-very-angry-frog\/","title":{"rendered":"the sonorous war cry of a very angry frog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> I&#039;ve always liked frogs. I remember, when I was probably around 4 years old, being fascinated by the tadpoles that Dad brought home in a big jar from a farm pond. Mum explained about how they&#039;d gradually metamorphose (thought I doubt she used that word!) &amp; we watched their legs slowly grow &amp; their tails disappear as they swam around in an old tub, until the point where they became frogs.<\/p>\n<p> Frogs are amphibians, along with newts &amp; mud-puppies &amp; axolotls and the legless&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/animals.sandiegozoo.org\/animals\/caecilian\">caecilians <\/a>(which look like a cross between an eel and an earthworm). As a group, frogs are much younger &#8211; in geological terms &#8211; than the others: most fossil frogs date back only about 50 million years, although the earliest-known frog-like creature, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Triadobatrachus\">Triadobatrachus<\/a>, lived about 250 mya in the early Triassic.<\/p>\n<p> Like almost all terrestrial amphibians, adult frogs use not only lungs for gas exchange, but also their skin and the membranous lining of their mouths. (Lungless salamanders are an exception &#8211; as the name suggests, they must rely on their skin alone, which is very convenient for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/6804273\">those researching amphibian gas exchange<\/a>.) This reliance on transcutaneous respiration has meant that amphibians are very susceptible to harm due to to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.environment.nsw.gov.au\/animals\/frogchytridfungus.htm\">chytrid fungus<\/a> infection, which severely damages the skin and markedly reduces the animals&#039; ability to exchange O<sub>2<\/sub> &amp; CO<sub>2<\/sub> with the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p> In addition, using your skin as a gas exchange surface means that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gas_exchange\">you have to keep it moist<\/a>. This means that we&#039;d expect to find frogs only in environments that are humid and damp year-round, &amp; in general that&#039;s the case. But there are always exceptions. and the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Desert_rain_frog\">desert rain frog <\/a>is one of them. <em>Breviceps macrops<\/em> lives in one of the most inhospitable environments there is, a dry coastal strip of land in Namibia &amp; South Africa. Hardly a place for a frog! It spends most of its time in burrows dug deep enough to reach into moist sand, but comes out at night when the air is cooler &amp; more humid. While there&#039;s very little actual rain, moisture-bearing sea fogs roll in from the ocean on at least 100 nights each year, bringing some water to the habitat as the fogs condense onto dunes &amp; vegetation &#8211; enough to allow these little amphibians to survive. (There&#039;s no actual tadpole stage in their life cycle; little froglets develop directly from eggs in the burrows.)<\/p>\n<p> And like other amphibians, they vocalise to advertise their presence. I hesitate to say the sound is a croak. In fact, it drove my dog to distraction when I played the following clip.<\/p>\n<p> I give you &#8211; &#039;the sonorous war cry of a very angry frog&#039;.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p> &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#039;ve always liked frogs. I remember, when I was probably around 4 years old, being fascinated by the tadpoles that Dad brought home in a big jar from a farm pond. Mum explained about how they&#039;d gradually metamorphose (thought I doubt she used that word!) &amp; we watched their legs slowly grow &amp; their tails [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,37,23,47],"tags":[19,38,24,41],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>the sonorous war cry of a very angry frog : BioBlog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2015\/03\/the-sonorous-war-cry-of-a-very-angry-frog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"the sonorous war cry of a very angry frog : BioBlog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#039;ve always liked frogs. I remember, when I was probably around 4 years old, being fascinated by the tadpoles that Dad brought home in a big jar from a farm pond. 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