Frog Blogging
Since we got them, I’ve spend an inordinate amount of time staring at my frogs. I can’t help it. They are adorable and they have the funniest little behaviours. They often like to hide and get into the tightest little spots in their tank – which freaks me out because I’m afraid they’ll get stuck and not be able to get to the surface to breath. Despite being *aquatic* frogs that spend their entire life in water, they have lungs and so they must get to the surface to breath every 10 minutes or so ((I’m starting to see why parents feel compelled to check in on their newborns to make sure they are breathing, even though there is no reason why they wouldn’t be breathing. Because I’m doing that with frogs!)). Sometimes, instead of hiding, they like to float with their arms and legs stretched out, which is known as “burbling”. Here’s a video of one of the frogs burbling:
Not exactly the most action-packed footage.
My favourite thing is when they burble at the top of the water so that their little mouth is sticking out of the water – I assume this is so that they can sleep and not have to wake up to go up to the surface to take a breath.
There’s one guy ((I’m assuming that it’s the same guy, although it could be a different frog every time for all I know.)) who seems very curious, as he always pokes his head out of the castle to look at me when I go over to the tank to check them out.
Then he’ll come out of the castle and come right up to the glass to see me. He seems to just like to look at me – and he even posed for some pictures today:
Also, in case you are wondering what African dwarf frogs eat ((Because you *know* you were wondering that.)) – the answer is just about anything. They are scavengers, so they’ll eat live or dead food. The pet store where we got them recommended the frozen bloodworms, so that’s what we’ve been feeding them. Sounds disgusting to me, but the frogs seem to like them. I took a video of them eating dinner tonight, but it’s going to take eleventy billion hours to upload to Youtube, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see that one ((I know you are *dying* to see it.)),
very interesting! Where does one go to acquire frogs and the palace that they require?
A friend of mine used to have an aquatic frog, but it was nowhere near as cute as these guys. It was a horrible pale translucent bloated thing that I used to wake up to find just floating and STARING at me when I slept on my friend’s sofa when I was visiting. It was kept right next to the window, and the lights from outside used to shine through it. It was FREAKY and gave me nightmares on the rare occasions I was able to get any sleep in that room at all.
I do like other frogs, though! Every year my sister and I would get a batch of frogspawn from a local stream and attempt to raise adult frogs. I feel awful about all the tadpoles that perished under our “care”… but we did get one adult once, which lived in our garage eating the worms and slugs we fed it until it escaped one night. We called it Sarah for some reason, and a friend of my dad once saw it and totally freaked out. Turns out some people are phobic of even non-horrible-pale-translucent-bloated-staring frogs.
@Michelle – We got them at PJ Pets in Richmond. It only cost $11 for 5 frogs! And then about $100 for a tank, fake plants, food, and their glorious castle (the castle, was on sale for $14). We toyed with the idea of the getting them a helicopter that they could play in, but it was $100+ (vs. $14 for the castle) and a bit too big for their tank. They spend a lot of time in and on the castle, so we think we made the right choice.
@Cath – Horrible translucent bloated staring frog sounds horrible!