This frog (a Growling Grass Frog) is being held by frog expert Ray Draper, who has been testing this species of frog for Chytrid Fungus across the SW of Victoria. For each frog tested (handled) a new pair of gloves is worn to ensure that we are not passing the fungus from one individual to another. To test them a cotton bud is used and it is simply rubbed over an area of skin and a swab taken and analysed. It only takes a few moments and the frog is released straight back into its habitat. The actual test costs $30 for each swab. This is being done to try and track the progress of the disease as it is decimating frog numbers both here and other places around the world. Even though this frog looked healthly it may have been carrying the fungus. (It takes a certain set of conditions to enable it to become active on the frogs- but we dont understand what they are as yet. Once it is active it causes the eventual death of the frog by suffocating it.) This photo was taken at a WaterWatch educational day organised by the Corangamite CMA.

Growling Grass Frog in a garden pond at a farm property between Geelong and Ballarat. There were another three of these large frogs in the vegetation close by around the pond.

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!