The real purpose of leap day may be to keep the calendar aligned with the seasons, but here at the rescue project, we’d like to believe the day is designed to honor our favorite leapers. To celebrate, we’ve put together some fun facts about frog leaping.
FUN FROG FACTS:
- Not all frogs can leap, or even hop. The desert rain frog (Breviceps macrops) has legs that are too short to hop. Instead, it walks.
- Male frogs of the genus Pipa are known to defend their territory by jumping at and then wrestling other males.
- The New Guinea bush frog (Asterophrys turpicola) takes jump attacks one step further: before it jumps at a strange frog, it inflates itself and shows off its blue tongue.
- Stumpffia tridactyla are normally slow-moving critters, but when they’re startled they can abruptly jump up to 8 inches. That doesn’t sound very far, but these little guys are less than half an inch long!
- The Fuji tree frog (Platymantis vitiensis) may be the leaping stuntman of the frog world. Each time it leaps, it twists in the air—sometimes even 180 degrees—to throw predators off its trail.
- The Larut torrent frog (Amolops larutensis) gets its name from a nifty leaping trick: it can jump into a fast-moving stream and back to its usual perch, the underside of a rock, without being affected by the current.
- Similarly, the parachuting red-eyed leaf frog (Agalychnis saltator) gets its name because it speeds to mating opportunities by jumping from trees with finger-and toe-webbing spread wide.
- The record for longest jump by an American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) recorded in a scientific paper is a little over 4 feet. But scientists who went to the Calaveras County Fair, which Mark Twain’s short story made famous for frog jumping, found that more than half the competitors bested that record—and one jumped more than 7 feet in one leap!
- The Guinness Book of World Records doesn’t include any frogs for their leaping ability. But it does track human performance in frog jumping (jumping while holding one’s toes). There are records listed for the longest frog jump and the fastest frog jumping over 10 and 100 meters.
In honor of Leap Day celebration coordination efforts by Amphibian Ark, the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project made this video for a frog song written by Alex Culbreth.
Post By Meghan Bartels, Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project
When I was a keeper, I often spent my free time observing our large group of ring-tailed lemurs. They have a relatively peaceful, but comical society. Often disagreements are settled with the females with babies clinging tightly to their backs at the front lines (that’s how risky the disagreements are). And, their most effective weapon is..…smell. Males arm up their tails with scent from glands on their wrists and fling it in the opponents’ general direction with great vigor. The whole event usually involves some dancing around each other until a smell wins out. It is all very entertaining.
Ruffed lemurs are definitely one of my favorite species of lemur! They are terrible to clean up after, and horribly loud, but delightful characters. When I was a zoo keeper, I worked closely with the oldest Red-ruffed lemur in captivity at the time. I had to do some training with him once and the only reward he would consistently work for was his own reflection in a mirror. The fact that he appeared to adore himself made him even more adorable to me! 
