They’re found in the Andes mountains, in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.But they’re not just hanging out on the mountain tops.These frogs are hiding in the cracks and crevices of the rocks.
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If you wasted some time in the 80s playing Frogger, you might have been left with the impression that frogs just aren’t that tough. After all, if falling off a log can be fatal there would seem to be little hope for survival outside the ponds and streams they’re often associated with. But real frogs, not computer game ones, have been around for 250 million years, and they have adapted to survive almost everywhere on the planet. Here are just a few of the wildest places that frogs live, all of which take a lot more fortitude than little Frogger ever had.
Northern leopard frogs can be found throughout North America, from parts of Canada all the way to New Mexico. You might have surmised that the northern reaches of that range have much colder winters than those in the south. So how do the northern-most of the northern leopard frogs survive that cold? Well back in 1972, scientists discovered some leopard frogs overwintering in a frozen pond about 50 km north of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. To survive the cold, the frogs were hibernating under the ice. But because hibernating frogs are easy prey for predators, the frogs also needed a safe place to wait out the season. They were hibernating in what researchers called hibernation pits. The frogs covered the pits — and themselves — with silt. That helped camouflage them from predators like trout, which remain active during the winter. But there’s still one problem that these frogs had to solve: Getting oxygen at the bottom of a lake. You see, frogs have two ways they can absorb oxygen. They have lungs and breathe oxygen like we do, but they also get oxygen through epidermal breathing, or the ability to take in oxygen through the skin. Since frogs can’t use their lungs underwater, these leopard frogs definitely have to go with option B here. But because there’s not enough oxygen available under the layers of silt, it means they need to leave a gap in the protective layer to let fresh, oxygen rich water back in. They also maintain some slow movement throughout the cold season, to help flush out some of the silt so they can get needed oxygen. All that means they can remain cozy and mostly hidden throughout the winter. Probably not especially warm, though.
Now it’s a fact of life that every living thing needs water to survive. But frogs don’t just need to drink water. Their skin needs to stay moist, too, which is why they often live near water sources like ponds. However, there are some frogs that can survive in dry places where there is no ground water visible at all. Take for example, the desert rain frog. It lives in South Africa and kind of looks like Grumpy Cat if you stuffed her in a hamster ball. As its name implies, desert rain frogs are found in the desert. But the word “rain” isn’t exactly accurate. These frogs’ main source of water is not rain. On average, their habitat only gets between 100 and 200 mm of rain in a year, most of it in the winter. So the desert rain frog has to figure out how to get water in other ways. But these frogs don’t live just anywhere in the desert. They opt for deserts near the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. They’re also most active at night, when there’s more likely to be marine fog rolling off the sea. That fog keeps the frogs and the sand damp, at least for a little while. Then during the day, the frogs burrow into the fog-dampened sand, which retains moisture and keeps their skin from drying out. No pond necessary!
Next, Nearly 9,000 feet above sea level, on mountain tops so forbidding that researchers have a hard time even reaching them, the saddleback toad is on cloud nine. Saddleback toads are a group of tiny frogs, typically less than 1.5 cm from nose to butt. They’re found in the Andes mountains, in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. But they’re not just hanging out on the mountain tops. These frogs are hiding in the cracks and crevices of the rocks. They’re working on figuring out how the frogs survive when the pools are dry, and where they go when they do.
Saddleback toads are adapted to living in cloud forests, which are lush environments that grow at high elevations and often have their canopies in the clouds. These toads can only be found in small, isolated populations, since they need a cold and humid environment, and these conditions can only be found on mountaintops. This makes them especially vulnerable, since they are often restricted to one or two mountaintops, making them microendemic.
The scrotum frog lives in Lake Titicaca and a few neighboring lakes, and its unique appearance is actually an adaptation to the lower oxygen environment. Its loose, flappy skin provides more surface area to absorb oxygen, and its large size and slow metabolism help it survive in the hypoxic waters.
The laterite frog is found along the West Coast of India, in an environment so barren it is deemed a wasteland. During the monsoon season, pools form on the surface and the frogs survive in and around them. Scientists are still researching these frogs to figure out how they survive when the pools dry up and where they go. Despite our limited knowledge about them, we should still be taking steps to protect the habitat of these frogs living in a seemingly desolate environment. Unfortunately, people in the area use it as a dumping ground and for washing cars, leaving behind messes that are hard to clean up. Additionally, the area is mined for laterite, a mineral used to make bricks, further fragmenting the habitat. Without protection, these frogs are left even more vulnerable.
What’s remarkable is that they’ve managed to survive in such an unlikely place, proving that no place can truly be considered a wasteland. Through millions of years of adaptation, frogs have learned to thrive in diverse environments, from frozen ponds in Ontario to a trash dump in India.
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