The Amphibian Foundation's Frog Blog

The frog tongue is a high-speed adhesive Alexis Noel , Georgia Institute of Technology , David Hu , Georgia Institute of Technology and Mark Mandica , The Amphibian Foundation How does one get stuck studying frog tongues? Our study into the sticky, slimy world of frogs all began with a humorous video of a real African bullfrog lunging at fake insects in a mobile game. This frog was clearly an expert at gaming; the speed and accuracy of its tongue could rival the thumbs of texting teenagers. The frog that was the genesis of the authors’ tongue research. Further YouTube research yielded amazing videos of frogs eating mice , tarantulas and even other frogs . The versatile frog tongue can grab wet, hairy and slippery surfaces with equal ease. It does a lot better than our engineered adhesives – not even household tapes can firmly stick to wet or dusty surfaces. What makes this tongue even more impressive is its speed: Over 4,000 species of...

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Gabe Andrle and Tessa Cafritz joined the Amphibian Foundation as interns from Emory. Gabe is holding two Boa constrictors (One Belem, one Argentine) and Tessa has Princess, our amphibian ambassador, a Giant Toad ( Rhinella marina )

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Sonya came to see the new labs at the foundation and talk about Atlanta amphibian monitoring. She is leading a Cobb County Frog Call Workshop on March 14th - register for free by following this link .

Pierson Hill, Biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission displaying 12 egg clutches of many he and his team saved from desiccation in the field. Apalachicola NF did not receive the necessary seasonal rainfall to inundate the eggs naturally, so the eggs were found, collected and most will be part of an experimental assisted-metamorphosis program at ANF. Almost 100 eggs were transported to the Amphibian Foundation for rearing into the captive breeding program

via Instagram http://ift.tt/2jncKjs Since I met my first Pipa pipa ( Suriname Toad ) I have been completely enamored with this species. Their huge flat bodies, their bizarre courting, breeding and reproductive behavior, the fact that tiny Pipas pop out of mom’s back — the list goes on and on — Right down to the wackadoodle star-shaped fingertip lobes on each of the creepy fingers. Using SEM, one can see that each lobe of the star-shaped lobes branches out into 4 more star-shaped lobes — and so on, and so on — maximizing the surface area for still yet unknown reasons. They definitely use their fingers to detect prey — you can observe them rooting around in the substrate locating food — but are there receptors at the ends of these lobes? Are they chemoreceptive? Gustatory? Electroreceptive? … fascinating. Pipids lack tongues and teeth! They capture and transport prey through a mechanism called suction feeding. As the name implies, suction feeders engulf prey with the surrounding...