A Bullfroggy Day

The American Bullfrogs were out in force on this spring day. I met 6, and here are the 2 most photogenic. To you and me, these guys are handsome herptiles, but for many of the arthropods flying, crawling, and swimming around here, they are voracious predators.

Of the herptiles of New Jersey, I probably see turtles the most, followed by frogs [1], then by snakes, and with salamanders far behind. Herptiles are an interesting classification of animals, comprising amphibians and reptiles. What's interesting about that? Well, mostly it's that reptiles aren't especially closely related to amphibians. Birds, which we think about as a rival group to reptiles, are taxonomically a type of reptile. And even mammals are more closely related to reptiles than amphibians are. But because historically people think about reptiles and amphibians together, the 2 land-based ectotherms are studied together, despite what we now know about relatedness.

May 10, 2023 at Delaware Raritan Canal
Photo 282313186, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

May 10, 2023 at Delaware Raritan Canal
Photo 282314989, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

[1] Here, as in much froggy literature, you should consider toads to be a subset of the frogs.


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