Fabulous Frogs

What Frogs are Like

Frogs are amphibians. This means that they live part of their life in water and the other part of it on land. Amphibians are cold-blooded animals. Their body temperature is the same as the air temperature.

Frogs have strong back legs. They can jump far. The front legs are short. Frogs have webbed feet for swimming. They breathe with lungs.

Frogs can be very small or as big as a cat. Frogs come in many different colors like blue, orange, red, yellow, and green. Some even have spots.

What Frogs Eat

Frogs are carnivores which means they usually eat other creatures. They are not picky eaters. Small frogs usually eat insects, spiders, bugs and worms.

Big frogs eat mice, chicks, small birds, snails, slugs, centipedes, rats, bats, small fish and even other frogs. Most frogs do like their food alive and moving. They do not eat anything that is dead.

Frog Habitat

Most frogs are found in warmer places. You can find frogs in water or near places that have water like ponds and streams. Some frogs never go into the water. They live on land and go to the water only to mate.

There are some kinds that live in trees. These frogs have tiny sticky pads on their fingers and toes to help them cling to the tree trunk as they climb.

Some frogs live on land and have short hind legs and cannot hop. Frogs that live in cold places, hibernate during the winter. They hibernate in burrows or in mud at the bottom of ponds.

Egg

Frogs lay their eggs in water or wet places. The large clump of several thousand eggs is too big to be eaten. It is covered by jelly that tastes bad. This protects the egg.

Tadpole

When the egg leaves its jelly shell it becomes a tadpole, a baby frog. The tadpole has a long tail, and lives in the water.

Froglet

The tadpole begins to change. It starts to grow hind legs, then front legs. Their tails become smaller and the legs grow. The lungs develop, to get the frog ready to live on land.

Frog

Eleven weeks after the egg was laid, a fully grown frog with lungs, legs, and no tail leaves the water. This frog will live mostly on land.