I've been reading about the American Bullfrog and have discovered that Joe is a girl. Yep, female as in smells good, curves in all the right places, excellent legs and of course is an egg laying kinda gal.
Now get this: sex is determined by the size of their ear drum. Does that sound strange to you? I thought that a creatures sex was determined by ovaries and testicles, the 'ol XY chromosome. But I read it on the Internet so it must be true. The article said the sex of the American Bullfrog can be determined by their eardrum. The females ear drum is about the same size as her eye or maybe a bit smaller. The male ear drum is larger, much larger than his eye. Bet he walks with a strut in the showers showing off those large ear drums.
The female lays up to 20,000 eggs which are fertilized outside her body. I guess there must be some kind of weird male frog bachelor party going on here to get 20,000eggs fertilized... not a pretty picture.
The tadpoles take up to 3 years to turn into frogs. They have gills and eat anything they can get into their mouth... including other tadpoles. In frog land picking on your brother or sister is serious business and very filling. Tadpoles get eaten not only by their peers but also by snakes, birds and fish. However some predators shy away from them because they, apparently, taste pretty bad. Have you ever wondered how someone figured out they taste bad... eeewwwwww. I believe that other tadpoles as well as frogs find them tasty enough. The longer a tadpole remains a tadpole the bigger he will be when he turns into a frog.
Once the tadpole turns into a frog it's about 2 years or so for the frog to reach sexual maturity.
They can grow up to 8 inches. Live about 4 or 5 years in the wild and up to 16 years in captivity.
Natural predators are herons, egrets, snakes, raccoons and the great white shark. Man is of course a predator and harvests the American Bullfrog for, you guessed it, frog legs. The American Bullfrog has the nicest legs of all the frogs. These impressive legs allow a mature frog to jump up to 6 feet. Personally I'll pass on the legs.
Both sexes are very aggressive, don't play well with others and will defend their territory. They will claim 15 to 60 feet of "territory" we would recognize as shore line and, if a frog has the audacity to trespass, they will attack, wrestle, yell and scream at any frog who trespasses. The only time they "get along with others" is during mating season. Do you think it's like marriage?
They do have teeth after a fashion along their upper jaw. Their tongue is quite strong and is used to flip small creatures into it's mouth. Their nostrils close when they submerge and they can absorb oxygen from the water through their skin which allows them to stay submerged for long periods of time.
These guys are not liked everywhere. Apparently man has been releasing them in places they didn't previously inhabit. This has caused problems with the animal population because the balance of nature has been disrupted. I hate it when Mother Nature has a little vertigo... the wind blows, global warming gets going, volcanoes start erupting, El Nino becomes La Ninja or what ever, Al Gore reinvents the Internet, Obama starts passing out tire gauges and Dan Quayle learns how to spell potato(e)... all because someone released some damn frog into the wild. There are places, like BC in Canada, that want people to report sighting or hearing the bullfrog. I guess they then capture the not so innocent green machine and have it relocated to a more tolerant area of the world... like the USA.
Aren't you glad your read this blog?
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