in the forests of venezuela, there’s a rare frog that offers views i never dreamt of: the glass frog (cochranella antisthenesi) is partly transparent and lets you see directly into its interior.
in this picture by h. & h.j. koch, you can see a female and her eggs.
more information on the family of glass frogs (wikipedia): de, en
the following video provides a close-up view of the the development of 5 frog embryos.
11 days in 66 seconds:
more information on the making of this time-lapse video: [more...]
i’m in the process of making another frog spawn time-lapse video.
it looks quite promising so far: i’m getting high-resolution (both pixel- and time-wise) macro footage of 5 eggs.
this photo shows their current state:
day 6 is coming to an end, and they should soon hatch from their gelatinous eggs. [more...]
fun fact from the field of herpetology1:
the northern water-holding frog (cyclorana australis) may not be a very attractive or appealing amphibian, optically, but its strategy of surviving the dry summers of northern australia is somewhat special: it burrows deep into the ground, forms a water-proof cocoon made of shed skin, and estivates (estivation is similar to hibernation).
in order to survive several months – sometimes years – of dormancy, it has to dramatically lower its metabolism and needs sufficient supplies of the most important things for life: energy (i.e. fat) and water (which is stored in their enlarged bladder).
aborigines have been using the frogs for many generations: “the aborigines dig them out and use them as a source of water, placing the frog’s rear end into their mouths and squeezing the water out.”2
i also liked warren’s explanation on how the frogs can stay alive underground for several years: “Because I ain’t no biologist, I have decided that it is magic.”
here are some more photos taken in/at the pond. there’s a whole new world opening up at the moment. :-)
i gave it away when i posted the frogspawn photos, but check out the video at the end of this album. it shows how my new pentax optio w20 goes underwater without an extra uw-housing. it’s got some nice features, including a minimum distance of 1 cm for macro photography. nice!1 2
[view photos: more pond photos]
i found two clusters of frog spawn in my pond, yesterday.
they’re 4 days old, at most, and based on recent years, i believe they’re offspring of the european common frog (rana temporaria, grasfrosch).
one cluster is so big, it reaches out of the water.
[related post: time-lapse: frog spawn]
just a few days ago, friends of the family told me that there was a strange-sounding toad in their “swimming pond” (swimming pool & pond, all at once): “it sounds very much like a cricket.”
it turned out to be a european green toad (bufo viridis; wechselkröte), an endangered species of toad (bufonidae), whose “warbling” callings are often confused with cricket sounds (see video).
anyway – last night, i drove over to their place to check it out myself – and i spent more than an hour at their pond, watching and listening how two males competed.
the most amazing experience:
whenever i startled them (unintentionally), they were silent for several minutes. BUT when i played back the video recordings of their warbling from a few minutes before, they immediately joined in and competed with my camera.
to see the video and some photos, please continue reading.
[more...]
