{"id":616,"date":"2010-01-08T21:39:34","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T08:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2010\/01\/a_wide_froggy_mouth\/"},"modified":"2010-01-08T21:39:34","modified_gmt":"2010-01-08T08:39:34","slug":"a-wide-froggy-mouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2010\/01\/a-wide-froggy-mouth\/","title":{"rendered":"a wide froggy mouth – but not on a frog"},"content":{"rendered":"

 When I was an undergraduate a joke about wide-mouthed frogs<\/a> went the rounds…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Frog mouths are quite interesting, actually. Look into that gape & you’ll see a tongue (which is rooted at the front of the mouth<\/a>, allowing it a greater forward reach). Back of the tongue is the glottis, opening into the trachea, & behind it the entrance to the oesophagus (showing, yet again, that if life was designed then the designer did a fairly poor job of it<\/a> – having the airway & food passage cross over in the back of the throat is not really a good thing…). And on either side, in from the jaw joint, are the openings to the eustachian tubes<\/a> that link the throat & inner ear. Another thing I find fascinating is that if you look at the roof of a frog’s mouth, you’ll see two bulges that mark the underside of the eyeballs. (Once a zoologist, always a zoologist…)<\/span><\/p>\n

But this post is about another type of frog mouth altogether. Or, to be correct, a frogmouth:<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"papuan<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This is a Papuan frogmouth – we saw a pair of these lovely little birds at the Habitat<\/a><\/em> in Port Douglas. They might look vaguely owl-like, but frogmouths are only distantly related to owls. Their feet are smalled & weaker, and while they’ve got good night vision their eyes aren’t as big as those of an owl. Frogmouths are usually nocturnal, but the two we saw were sitting amiably in a corner of the ‘breakfast with the birds’ area, & in fact we encountered them on our way through to the savannah habitat after a most excellent breakfast (with the birds – if you go there, watch out for the ibis as it’ll pinch unguarded sausages!). They were quite tame & one was happy to hop onto the keeper’s arm – you can see those little toes, quite unlike an owl’s talons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"papuan<\/p>\n

As the name suggests, a frogmouth’s mouth has quite a wide gape,<\/a> Their main food is insects but apparently they’ll also take rodents & small lizards, swooping down silently to catch their prey. You can see in the photos that a frogmouth’s plumage has a soft, almost indistinct look to it – & it’s not because my photos are blurry! The ‘soft’ structure of owl feathers apparently underlies the typically silent flight of an owl<\/a> (such as our own morepork<\/a>), & I wonder if the same principle is operating in the frogmouths. And in the daytime, that fuzzy, indistinct plumage would provide excellent camouflage<\/a> while frogmouths sleep in their roosts.<\/p>\n

We saw a lot of bird species at the Habitati<\/i>, but I think overall the frogmouths were my favourites – they were such engaging little things \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 When I was an undergraduate a joke about wide-mouthed frogs went the rounds… Frog mouths are quite interesting, actually. Look into that gape & you’ll see a tongue (which is rooted at the front of the mouth, allowing it a greater forward reach). Back of the tongue is the glottis, opening into the trachea, & […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,23],"tags":[19,24,34],"yoast_head":"\na wide froggy mouth - but not on a 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\/2010\/01\/a-wide-froggy-mouth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"a wide froggy mouth - but not on a frog : BioBlog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\" When I was an undergraduate a joke about wide-mouthed frogs went the rounds… Frog mouths are quite interesting, actually. 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