Source: The Dodo
I can still remember enjoying watching the tadpoles raised in tanks in my classroom develop legs and begin to emerge from the water. Years later, and a few years from now, I am still as amazed by the process as I have ever been.
If you have a wildlife-friendly garden pond, one of nature’s greatest miracles can happen in early spring. Frogs lay eggs in February. Each female will lay somewhere 2,000 eggs in a jelly ball. Many eggs die and turn cloudy as they die, but the rest will take about two weeks to hatch.
When tadpoles are first born, they only have a mouth, gills and a tail. Inside their intestines are the remains of jelly from their eggs and this sustains them for the first few days of life. After about a week, the tadpoles will be strong enough to swim and forage for food that, for the next few days of life, will consist entirely of algae.
After about four weeks, the tadpoles begin to shed their gills and grow teeth. Soon their hind legs developed, their diet changed, and they became carnivores. They will eat any animal matter they can find alive or dead. Try putting a finger in a pond and they can even help you exfoliate. After a few more weeks, the tadpoles develop the front legs and head shape of a frog.
The final change occurs when the tail is reabsorbed by the tadpole and used as a protein source. This is when the tadpole ceases to be a tadpole and becomes a small frog, commonly known as a baby frog. It emerges from the water becoming completely carnivorous and breathes with both its wet skin and by using its lungs.
The entire metamorphosis process will take about three or four months and these baby frogs will stay on dry land for the next three years before they become sexually mature and will return to the water to breed.
As I sit and watch them, I often wonder how many of the two thousand eggs will ever go this far?
David Chapman’s stunning photo of a tadpole won first prize in the ‘Garden Wildlife’ section of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition. About taking the photo, he said:
The tadpole of a common frog, Rana tamporaria, rests on an aquatic plant under water. I’m photographing the life cycle of a common frog and I think this is the most photogenic stage in its development. I love how the tadpole pushes the meniscus of the water from below. I used an aquarium and put the stem of an aquatic plant inside. I introduced the tadpole and waited for it to climb up the trunk and touch the underside of the meniscus.
