Tuesday, June 2, 2009

This frog is a Litoria raniformis. It is one of a number of endangered frog species in this area. I have included the latin name as it seems to have a number of different common names such as Growling Grass Frog, Green or Warty Swamp Frog or Southern Bell Frog depending on where you look it up. They are being affected badly by the Chytrid fungus and so have gone from being one of the most common frogs in Vic to one of the more uncommon. These frogs hunt and eat other frogs. Most frogs have hearing that picks up the calls of members of their own species best(so they can hear each other in ponds full of many different species of frogs all calling together.) whereas these guys can hear everyone and this enables them to hunt down other frogs to eat!

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