Frogs

Frogs are boring. They do not have tails, further removing them from the semblance of lizards and causing me to lose interest. Snakes are virtually an entire tail so they get a pass. Salamanders might as well be lizards unless you're a nerd. Turtles are unique, beautiful creatures and despite modifying their ribcage into a shell, they still have a tail. Tadpoles are great. Frogs are not. But they are amphibians so I'll still take pictures of them. And at the end of they day they're more interesting than dogs, monkeys, and mammals.

A green frog, but not a green frog.

So that's a bullfrog. As a seasoned reader of this blog you can probably see how it is a totally separate entity from the below frog, which is the completely different green frog. Gee, these entries sure have gotten into the habit of questioning the validity of species, at least with relevance to the average person. Louis C.K. sums it up pretty well.

A green frog, but it is rather brown.

But I must stick to my derpetologist roots and spearhead awareness of biodiversity. Obviously, you can tell these two species apart by the presence of dorsolateral ridges on the green frog which are absent on the bullfrog. In English, this means that there's a line that extends down the green frog's back visible in the above picture. In the bullfrog picture you can see how the ridge simply curls around the tympanum (the round thing; its what frogs use to hear) and extends downwards, not onto the back of the frog. Also, bullfrogs are huge. And they sound different. And their genomes probably have a bunch of differences. And the two frogs don't interbreed. But for the sake of easiness, perhaps we should just call all frogs "green frogs."

What better time to break the controversy with the first video of the season. I'm breaking into the educational nature video sector with this (extremely) short film to show you the differences between the calls of the two species in question. I imagined that simple frog calls by themselves would be a little dry so I added the most popular music on today's radios: jazz.

Watch in 1080!

Does it work? I don't know. You tell me. Either way, it's short and to the point. Anyway, let's celebrate the first video of the Magical Temperate Northeast project with everyone's favorite puzzle: Where's the Lithobates sylvaticus?

There is a frog here. Somewhere.