The Digital Frog Blog

I am glad the frogs don’t have to depend on me alone for their survival—I never managed to get my frog safely across the road.

Frogster is a new game for children on the Vancouver Aquarium website. The idea is to lead your frog safely across the road avoiding various natural and man made threats.

The plight of the frogs and amphibians is serious and this is another way to deliver that message to children. The game will remind all of us “slightly” older folks of the original video games for Commodore 64 and Atari. The perils to avoid in Frogster are air pollution, water pollution, loss of habitat, climate change, human interference and Chytrid fungus. Frogs in the natural world are having a hard time avoiding these threats and the poor frogs in my game were no better off. The hope of this game’s introduction on the website is to draw more attention to the overwhelming decline in the amphibian population due to habitat loss and the Chytrid fungus as well as to stimulate fund raising efforts for the Year of the Frog.

(To help these efforts, Digital Frog International will be donating 5% of The Digital Frog 2.5 sales to Amphibian Ark this year.)

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Sitting anxiously awaiting the signs of spring, I was listening to a radio program asking listeners to call in with their favorite signs of spring. It got me thinking about mine. Thinking about it I realized I have favorites for different senses. I love to see the first buds of green poking their way out of my garden or the new leaf buds on the trees; of course the early flowers are great too.

Spring has a smell to me, rain and new earth, with last year’s vegetation composting on the ground it adds to that rich earthy smell. Sometimes the smell can be too much, like when the local farmers spread the manure on the new spring fields!

My favorite sound is definitely the Spring Peepers. On my evening walks with the dogs I pass by a couple of wet areas and the chorus of frog chirps is unbelievable. The Peepers are the first frogs out in the spring and can be found in most of eastern North America. These amazing little guys are only .75-1.25 inches long yet they sing a mighty song. We have had great fun learning different frog calls with The Digital Frog 2.5 program. In the ecology section many frog and toad species are investigated and you can listen to and learn their calls.

To hear the distinctive call of the spring peepers, click on the player below.

I also enjoy the earthy flavor of fiddle heads found on our walks (though we usually find them after they unfurl). Now that spring is here I can feel the sun and breeze on my face as I no longer need everything covered up!

What are your favorite Spring experiences?

Add your Spring comments for a chance to win a copy of ScienceMatrix: Cell Structure and Function.

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Being dubbed the “frog lady” by all and sundry results in friends and family alerting me to all things froggy.

So I regularly receive emails about froggy topics such as the 70-million-year-old fossil of a giant frog unearthed in Madagascar, the killer disease chytridiomycosis (a fungal disease that has been blamed for the extinction of one-third of the 120 frog species lost since 1980) and even an article about an Iranian woman giving birth to a frog (and the date was not April 1!).

Yesterday, I received several emails about the recent discovery of a lungless frog in Indonesia. One thing that bothered me about some of the articles was the implication that it is unusual for frogs to breathe through the skin as it’s know that frogs breathe in three different ways: though their mouths, lungs and skin. So I consulted the respiratory system module in the Anatomy and Physiology section of The Digital Frog 2.5. This is a small part of what it has to say:

Frogs have three different methods of respiration, or gas exchange:

• cutaneous respiration takes place across the skin,
• buccopharyngeal respiration occurs in the mouth,
• pulmonary respiration uses the nares, mouth, and lung

On land, most oxygen absorption occurs in the lungs. In water, most gas exchange takes place across the skin, but even the most aquatic frogs must come up to the surface to breathe. Most carbon dioxide is released across the skin. While hibernating, frogs do not use their lungs and depend on cutaneous respiration.

It seems frogs are much more versatile than us humans. But then, of course, we are not amphibians.

If you have any quirky frog stories to share, add a comment for your chance to win free software.

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I may be known as the frog lady these days, but there was a time when I could not tell a frog call from a bird call. That all changed when I became involved in Digital Frog International. The biodiversity section of The Digital Frog 2.5 features frogs and toads of North and South America, together with sound recordings of their calls.

Way back in 1995, we gave the first version of The Digital Frog to our vet to review. She reported back that her two year old son spent hours and hours clicking on the frogs and listening to their calls.

A few years ago we donated software to the Toronto Zoo and I spent a day in their conservation area helping visitors navigate our software. The frog calls were extremely popular.

I have also used this section to help children identify the spring peepers, northern leopard frogs, green frogs, wood frogs and tree frogs that can be found on our country property. Last summer my grandchildren were fascinated as they watched a grey tree frog, quickly nicknamed “Norman”, change from grey to green as he emerged from his hiding place. From then on, whenever they heard a tree frog call, they all rushed out looking for Norman.

Of course, I still secretly believe that the herpetologist who provided the recordings we used in the program was playing a joke on us —the bullfrog sounds just like a cow!

To learn more about the frog calls and other information on the frogs and toads of North and South America available in The Digital Frog 2.5, read more about the program’s ecology section. Or preview it for yourself with a free demo of The Digital Frog 2.5.

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As part of the Year of the Frog, the Vancouver Aquarium has produced “Bullfrog Ballet”, a two-minute, high-speed video showing bullfrogs feeding on insects in slow motion, giving them a grace you might not normally associate with large (and seemingly ungainly) bullfrogs.

From the Vancouver Aquarium’s description:

Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) are native to eastern North America, from Canada as far south as Florida, but they’re invading British Columbia, where the Vancouver Aquarium is located. They were introduced here in the early 1900s by people wanting to farm them for their legs.

As you can see, they’ll eat just about anything that will fit into their mouth. They can easily tip the delicate balance of nature in places where they are not naturally found.

Ironically this widely introduced species is disappearing in Ontario, Canada — part of its natural range.

The video is part of a wider exhibit running at the aquarium, “Frogs Forever?”, to raise awareness of the dangers facing the world’s frog populations and what we can do to help.

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I have always had an interest in the natural world and its inhabitants, but have certainly grown fonder of frogs since coming to work at Digital Frog International.

This year, 2008 has been dedicated as the Year of The Frog not because of the Chinese Zodiac, but because of the dire situation for frogs and amphibians around the world.

After surviving for over 360 million years, frogs and other amphibians are dying the world over. We could lose as much as 1/3 to 1/2 of the known 6,000 species in our lifetime. Loss of habitat is a big threat, but Chytrid Fungi is quickly becoming the greatest threat to frogs and amphibians. A new strain of the fungi was discovered in 1999, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and it is believed this is responsible for the widespread demise or many amphibian species.

I have four children and that is not the legacy I want to leave them. They deserve a healthy world with diverse species in it.
We need to take responsibility for the destruction of habitat; frogs are like the canaries in the coal mine , they are indicators of environmental health. The destruction of this species will be a forerunner for many more to follow.

We can help through agencies like Amphibian Ark who are trying to improve public awareness of the frog’s and amphibian’s dire situation. The global conservation plan is to keep species that will go extinct in captivity until the time comes that they can be secured again in the wild.

I do feel that we are doing something at Digital Frog by offering an alternative to real frog dissection, by doing virtual dissection we are saving frogs.

I am spreading the word among my friends and family about the frog’s troubles and hope you can do the same. We all know how fast things can spread when I tell two friends, they tell two friends etc.
Locally we can help to clean up and maintain healthy ponds and wetlands for our North American frogs.

I have taught my children from a young age that looking after the whole environment, not just our small part is an important responsibility, and one that we all need to take seriously. We have enjoyed some great family times over the years helping with clean-ups in our community. I am sure your community does something similar and if not maybe that is something you and your family would like to take on in this all important Year of the Frog

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