A frog he would a wooing go... into the night

by L Hayball-Clarke

Tuesday,  July 19, 2005

Did you know that frogs and toads can be found in many different places, not just in wet swamps? What about the equestrian ‘frog’, the substance found in the sole of a horse’s hoof, or the ‘frog’ that once attached a sword to your belt, or the decorative ‘frogs’ that fasten a military jacket or the neck opening of a Chinese cheongsam dress?

These are historic, cultural designer frogs, hardly reminiscent of the real frog, except that like real frogs, they are soft like the inside of a horse’s hoof, and sprawling, as across the jacket or dress opening.

Real frogs are named from the Old English frogga, and Spanish Rana from the Latin root. Frogs, and toads (French crapaud and Latin Bufo), are much disliked because they are soft and slimy and leap and sprawl just where you don’t want them. Attracted to light moths come, followed by leaping, sprawling frogs! Their habits are rather unsavoury to us, but spell
survival for the frog or toad.

When picked up, they assume you are a hungry predator. To ensure they are not eaten but dropped unharmed, they may urinate on you. Some frogs and toads also swell up and ooze slime from glandular skin on the shoulders and back. Thus they escape, being too big, slimy to hold or swallow.

This tactic works supremely well against birds, but frogs and toads are no
good at distinguishing humans from other predators and use these tactics indiscriminately. Now we know why we love to hate them.

The skin secretions of some South American frogs are lethal, and the poison curare is used as a medicine, and by indigenous people to tip arrows for hunting birds and mammals. None of the amphibians in Cayman are poisonous to us – in fact they are useful because they eat all sorts of insects and their tadpoles eat mosquito larvae in the swamps.

There is very little in the natural world that we can’t admire. Unfortunately amphibians in Cayman are running out of suitable natural living space in a process called loss of habitat. Interestingly, deforestation tends to create swampy land, attracting amphibians. Everything is interconnected: the birds we love eat frogs, so if you want to see more birds, preserve and protect swamps, the wildlife habitat of both.

According to the researcher Echternacht there are four recorded species of frogs on Cayman, none endemic. This means that they are all related to more widely-spread species of Caribbean and American frogs. Today, loss of suitable freshwater habitat is bringing about a reduction in their numbers, whereas 60 to 70 years ago there were enough amphibians to provide a large enough sample to measure their sizes and take an average. Apparently the results showed that Caribbean frogs vary greatly
in size. Female amphibians tend to be larger than the males, mainly because they have a large abdomen in which to carry millions of unfertilised eggs prior to the mating season.

Females of the once-common, paleskinned Cuban Tree Frog Osteopilis septentrionalis averaged 10 centimetres (4 inches) in length. Siedel measured Greenhouse Frog females, Eleutherodactylus planirostris planirostris, and found them to be, on average, much smaller as adults, reaching only about 3 centimetres or just over an inch long. The eggs and tadpoles are correspondingly smaller too.

Cuban tree frogs can change the colour of their skin from pale chalky white to match any colour background for camouflage. At the Botanic Park these frogs delight in perching on the wooden trellis at the entrance to the Colour Garden, and come close to matching the paint, trying to disappear from the inquisitive gaze of the predator or photographer... [See photos]

So “a frog he would a wooing go”…Calling distinctively into the night: “rivet-rivet, ark-ark, pink-pink or bleatbleat”, the louder the male calls the better his display of genetic strength for the female to choose from. She will mate with the male who calls loudest, longest and strongest, thus displaying the best set of genes to fertilise her eggs, despite his smaller stature! Some males never mate at all. During or just after the rains, listen for the loud, eerie, sheep or goat-like bleat of the Eastern Narrow-mouthed Toad, Gastrophryne carolinensis, emanating from the dense inland freshwater swamps of Grand Cayman. Over the shrill insect calls, I hear toads signalling to each other in the backwaters of Prospect, and the bleating really makes you think a herd of miniature sheep must be in residence!

Echternacht also speaks of the larger  warty toad Bufo marinus, an introduced species that eats bird’s eggs, lizards and insects, unfortunately driving out other indigenous frogs and toads by vigorously competing with them for food and  other resources.

In centuries gone by, frogs and toads were much more common. People found their antics either funny or repugnant. For example, in Shakespeare’s time (1564-1616) toads were even more numerous than they are now and enjoyed a rare fame. Shakespeare wrote: “the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head”, making reference to the ‘borax or stelon’ lump cut out of the head of the largest, old, warty European toads, fashioned into a ring. This organic ring, held by the wearer close enough to a skin wound caused by a bite was said to
reduce the pain and swelling, perhaps also saving a life. The toad-stone appeared to sweat and change colour when brought close to rat, spider or wasp bites containing venom, and was technically called the Batrachyte or Batrachos, an antidote to all sorts of poison. Has this ever been practised by peoples in the Caribbean or are the lumpy-headed toad species only found in Europe, or are they just extinct? We do know that this messy practise involving killing wise old toads has been superseded by antivenin drugs developed by modern medicine.

A long time ago Kenneth Graham wrote ‘Wind in the Willows’, a story familiar to children ever since, about the entertaining adventures of a megalomaniac toad. To quote from Graham: “The clever men at Oxford know all that there is to be knowed. But none of them know one half as much as intelligent Mr. Toad”, Graham’s way of cocking a snook at academia. Half a century ago Philip Larkin derided the work ethic and expressed his delight at authoring witty light-hearted novels by comparing the accepted concept of ‘work’ to a toad : “Why should I let the toad work squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork and drive the brute off?” He did so very successfully. Fortunately we still know what a toad is, and can understand the reference.

 Amphibians are the interesting halfway house between fish and reptiles. They are the smooth skinned, air-breathing vertebrates that ventured onto land before reptiles did, remaining ever dependent on water, like fish, to breed. They may soon disappear from their old haunts because of sheer competition for space, poisonous pollutants, and our serious intent to fill in every swamp. Biodiversity is lost and, who knows, birds, important medicines and biological insect control too. But land crabs eat frogs, their spawn and tadpoles, and that’s another story.

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