I experienced such thrilling and adventurous nights during our Bio 117 special project. By the way, Bio 117 is all about vertebrates except fishes. Geared with arm warmers for mosquito protection, flashlights, little pails, nets, and gloves, my groupmates and I used to venture out to the forested and creek areas at nighttime for our frog sampling.
Catching frogs is very simple although it could be hard. The common toads are rather easy because they are numerous around the campus, and besides, they are too slow to react to danger. The other frog species are harder because they are more agile and very few. Once you see one, all you have to do is grab it quickly without needless thoughts. Being hesitant wouldn’t do any good at all! Meanwhile, while frog is in your hand, it will try to escape by squirming, puffing up, or whatever tactics it has. Frogs are also quite hard to see during the night, especially during the dry season. Their camouflage are very effective.
The rough objective of our special project was to study the feeding habits of the frogs inside the university campus. We did this by dissecting and revealing the stomach contents. We caught mostly Rhinella marina (formerly known as Bufo marinus) so we decided to just study the feeding habits of this species. We also caught other species occasionally: Rana erythraea, Occidozyga laevis, Polypedates spp., Kaloula pulchra and Polypedates leucomystax.
This beautiful lush green frog is R. erythraea. This is very difficult to catch because of its smooth skin and agility.
This cute little bulldog-like frog is K. pulchra. I was told that it’s an exotic species which means that they are not native. It releases some kind of substance which makes it sticky to hold. It is also known for its loud deep carabao-like mating calls.
This nerd-looking frog is O. laevis. The eyes are notably dorsally-located because this species mainly lives in pools of freshwater. The dorsal eyes lets this frog peek above the water surface without revealing its body or even its head.
All the pictures posted were taken by my teacher,