Sarah L. Thomson - Save The...Frogs

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BLUE WHALES

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ELEPHANTS

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FROGS

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GIRAFFES

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GORILLAS

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LIONS

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POLAR BEARS

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TIGERS

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WHALE SHARKS

Some endangered animals arent easy to find. You probably wont spot a tiger in your backyard or a polar bear strolling down the street.

If youre looking for a frog, though, youre in luck. There are frogs and toads on every continent of Earth except Antarctica. Not every kind of frog or toad is endangered, but many of them are. Youll find out in chapter three why the world has become such a dangerous place for these small animals.

(Whats the difference between a frog and a toad? Well, not much. A toad is just a kind of frog. Usually a toad has bumpy skin instead of smooth, and short hind legs instead of long. But there are some frogs with bumpy skin, and there are some toads with long legsit just depends on the name given to that animal long ago.)

Youll find frogs pretty much anywhere with water. Swamps and ponds and streams are great places to look for frogs. But frogs can also live in forests, on mountains, and even in deserts and on the icy tundra where the soil deep underground is always frozen.

In the Arctic Circle, so far north that the sun doesnt rise in the winter, you can find the wood frog. This amazing animal freezes nearly solid in the winter. It doesnt move. Its heart doesnt even beat. But its not dead. It survives because its body replaces most of the water inside its cells with a kind of sugar. Water expands when it freezes. Sugar does not. So the sugar allows much of the frogs body to be frozen without harm. When spring arrives, the frogs body thaws, its heart begins to beat again, and it hops back off to its normal life.

In the warm, damp rainforest of Central and South America you might spot a poison frog. There are about 180 different species of these tiny frogs, and they are some of the most colorful animals on Earth. Their bright hues arent just for show. They warn other animals that the frogs skin contains a liquid that can kill anyone who tries to take a biteor at least make the predator sick. The golden poison frog is one of the most dangerous. It doesnt grow more than two inches long, but each little frog carries enough poison to kill ten people.

The golden poison frog, which can be found in the South American country of Colombia, is one of the brightest and deadliest animals on Earth.

If you visit African rainforests near the equator, you might find the largest frog in the world: the goliath frog (also called the giant slippery frog). With a body eight to twelve inches long, it weighs more than a Chihuahua.

In the deserts of Australia, you could come across the water-holding frog. If you were very thirsty, that would be a good thing. During the rainy season, these frogs gulp down as much water as they can hold. When the rains stop, they burrow deep into the dirt to stay cool and moist. Their underground burrows are lined with many layers of the frogs own shed skin, which helps to keep the animal from drying out.

If you were lost in the desert and ran out of water, you could find a patch of mud and dig down to turn up a water-holding frog, then hold it over your mouth and squeeze. It would release the water its holding, and youd get a drink. The indigenous people of Australia have sometimes used these frogs as a source of water in an emergency.