- There are around 5,000 species of frog in the world. The largest is the Goliath frog which can grow to be over a foot long and weigh as much as a newborn baby, while the smallest is the gold frog, which is 1cm long.
- Every species of frog has a unique call and some can be heard over a mile away.
- Frogs have permeable skin and so they don't need to drink - they absorb Water through their skin instead. There is a type of frog in Indonesia that breathes entirely through its skin as well, and has no lungs.
- A group of frogs is called an ‘army’.
- Frogs have what is called a biphastic life - ie they start off as aquatic larvae (tadpoles) which turn into adult frogs. Some species of frog actually care for their young. Poison dart frogs protect their eggs and wee on them to keep them moist. Other frogs will deposit unfertilised eggs into the water for their tadpoles to eat if food becomes scarce. The Darwin's frog has probably the most unusual parenting strategy. The male swallows the tadpoles as they hatch and keeps them in his vocal sac for about 60 days until they turn into tiny frogs, and then he spits them out.
- Frogs are known for their jumping ability. Some frogs can jump over 20 times their own body length; equivalent to a human jumping 30m. One frog, the African frog, does even better. It can jump 14 feet (4.2 meters) in a single bound. There are frogs that don't jump at all, like the waxy tree frog, which walks instead.
- Many frogs hibernate, and while they do, their bones form rings, rather like a tree trunk does, so if you find a frog skeleton you can slice through the bones to find out how old the frog was when it died. There is one North American frog which freezes solid in winter. The wood frog's body shuts down completely and the water in its cells is replaced with glucose and urea to keep cells from collapsing. In the spring, it thaws out and hops off with no ill effects.
- A frog completely sheds its skin about once a week - and then eats it.
- A frog will eat anything it can fit into its mouth - insects, Spiders, worms, Slugs, larvae and even small fish. A frog catches its prey with a long sticky tongue which moves really fast so the prey doesn't know what hit it. A frog's tongue can snap back into its mouth in 15/100ths of a second. When a frog swallows its food, it uses its eyes. A frog's eyes retract into its head to help push food down its throat.
- In Egypt the frog is the symbol of life and fertility, and in Egyptian mythology Heget is a frog-goddess who represents fertility.
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