The common frog

Rana temporaria
De bruine kikker

By Nienke van der Ende (Tv1m)

Content
1. Taxonomy 3
2. Food and digestion 4
3. Breathing and respiration 5
4. Skeletal system and body build 6
5. Sense and sensibility 7
6. Reproduction and offspring 8
7. Environment 9
8. Facts 10
9. Sources 11

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 Taxonomy
The kingdom of the common frog is (of course) animalia. That’s because it has animal cells.
The Phylum is Chordata, which is because it’s an animal with backbones (a vertebrates),
that’s because they had a Notochord. Then the class, that’s amphibians because it has a soft
moist skin and because it breeds in water, and because it is a cold-blooded animal, what
means that their body temperature is the same as their surroundings. They are also
amphibians because they begin their life in the water with a tail. In their youth they breathe
through gills, but as they age they breathe through lungs. The order of the common frog is
frogs. This is because they breed and spend their youth in the water, but after that they will
live on the land, and from then of on they won’t have a tail. The family is true frog. The true
frog is a type of frog that’s smooth and moist-skinned, with large legs and webbed feet. They
are there in all different sizes, but that’s logical because there are nearly 700 types. They all
have teeth along the top of their mouth. In many species, the females are larger than the
males, but the males have longer legs and more webbing between their hind toes. The males
usually also have thicker front legs. The genus is pond frogs, because the common frog breeds
in puddles, ponds, lakes, and canals. And last but not least, the species, that’s Rana
Temporaria, or the common frog.

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Food and digestion
The common frog is a carnivore, but it still eats a lot of
different things. They eat snails and worms. And snails,
for example the garden snail. They also eat insects, like
mosquitos and flies. They catch those with their long,
sticky tongue. After doing this, frogs close their eyes
and swallow the food through the holes in their skull.
This helps them push food through their throat. Then it
moves from the mouth to the pharynx. Then it enters the
esophagus. As with humans, an esophagus is a tube that
is located in the front part of the digestive tract. It connects the mouth with the stomach
working as a passageway for food. It pushes the food into the stomach, where the process of
decomposition of food begins in a simpler form. The stomach its functions is to store the
food. Then the pancreas. The pancreas is a long, flat gland. It produces enzymes that are
important for its digestion. It also produces insulin and glucagon, which help control the level
of glucose in the blood. Gallbladder is a small sac that is located under the liver. It works as a
reservoir for the bile. The waste first goes into the small intestine. After that the undigested
food moves into the large intestine. That undigested food gets stored there. The solid waste
that is left moves towards the cloaca. Water and liquid waste moves to the urinary bladder.
All the waste that’s now in the cloaca and the urinary bladder, goes ‘out’ trough the cloacal
opening.

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Breathing and respiration

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Skeletal system & body build
The common frog has a lot of bones for such a small animal, more than 200. One of them is
the spine (that’s why they are vertebrates). It’s very short, only a few centimetres. It is
to lower the stress when jumping and landing. For the jumping it also has long strong legs. It
also has a very strong hip bone, which is even
bigger than their spine. This supports the long legs,
and it makes the hump on his back. The common
frog also has double ankles, which gives them the
ability to fold op more tightly and that lets it jump
even better. It also has long toes. That’s how that
can easily swim trough the water. At the front leg it
only has four toes, while on the back it has five of
them. The front ones are also way shorter than the
ones at the back. The skull is flat. In there, there are
huge eye sockets. The eyes are very big, so that they
can look very clear under the water. They can see in
the dark. They also have a very big view, which is
very useful because it doesn’t have a neck and because of that it can’t turn its head. They do
not have sharp teeth, but that’s not necessary, because they only use them to keep the prey in
their mouth. They also don’t use their tongue to swallow their food, but they do this with their
eyes. Their skin is very moist, but that’s because they don’t drink water, but they absorb it
through their skin.

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Sense and sensibility
Frogs have these senses:
- Smell
- Taste
- See
- Hear
- Feeling
Frogs have the sense of smell, which they mostly use for finding breeding areas, but they
don’t use it for finding food. Their nose is pointed. Then they also have sense of taste. They
can only taste the four basic tastes: bitter, sweet, sour and salty. Then their eyes. The tadpoles
have their eyes on the sides of their head. But as an adult, their eyes ‘grow’ to the top of their
head. It can swim with his eyes open because of their double eyelids, they also have night
vision and depth perception. So, they just have super good eyes, for that matter. But they can’t
focus because they have a immobile lens. It’s still unclear if that frogs actually can see
colours. Then their ears. They don’t have outer ears, but they do have an eardrum on both
sides of their head. They also croak. They use their air sac below their mouth to make that
sound. Sometimes they don’t this to communicate with their group, but to attract females. It’s
a soft croak, and they do this in the water. Through his skin, it can learn a lot about himself
and his environment. He can detect temperature, pressure, touch and pain. The skin is not
really to protect itself, but for the breathing and absorb the water. That’s also why the skin is
moist. And it’s very thin for this. If they actually feel pain is not sure.

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Reproduction and offspring
Common frogs breed in shallow, calm fresh water, such as ponds, alternating between March
and late June, but most of the times in April. To attract the females, the males croak. The
females are attracted to the males that produce the loudest and longest calls. When the
females go to the males, they are held by one of the males. The two frogs remain in this
position for quite a long time. They then stay in this position until she lays her eggs, which
they fertilize with sperm when they are released from the female. Shortly after he fertilizes the
eggs with his sperm he lets her go. Usually, the
eggs will hatch, after about 6 days to three
weeks, after being fertilized. Shortly after
hatching, the tadpole still feeds on the remaining
yolk. At that moment, they only have bad gills, a
mouth and a tail. They stick to floating weeds or
grasses in the water using small sticky organs
between the mouth and the stomach. 7 to 10 days
after the tadpole has hatched, it will begin to
swim around and feed on algae. Then, 6 to 9
weeks (after hatching) it will grow and develop legs and arms. The head will look more like a
head, and the body will become longer, so it kind of looks like a small frog with a long tail.
Now it also starts eating dead insects and a few plants. After 12 weeks (after hatching) it
really is a small frog, only then with a small tail, and after 12 to 16 weeks (after hatching) the
frog goes out of the water and it then it’s a real frog.

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Environment
The common frogs do not have many requirements to live in. The only two things they want
are quiet water and dense vegetation. Frogs can live around ponds, lakes, puddles, marshes,
and cannels. When they go, as an adult, out of the water, they mostly go to long grasses. That
basically means that you can find them in pines, mixed and deciduous forests, forested tundra
and steppe, shrubs, open spaces, grasslands, dry and wet meadows, marshes, fields, rural
gardens, parks and urban areas. They don’t live in rivers, because that water is moving. They
are found in Great Britain, Europe, north-western Asia, northern
Scandinavia, inside the Arctic Circle, the Urals (except for most
of Iberia), southern Italy, parts of Japan and the southern of Balkans.
As an adult they go in autumn they go back to the water to hibernate.
They are normally active for much of the year, only hibernating in
the coldest months. Common frogs usually hibernate from late
October to January. They hibernate under water and take in oxygen from the water through
their skin. They spend most of the winter lying on top of the bottom's mud or partially buried
in mud. At times, they may even slowly swim around. There it is one of the most common
amphibians, what the name also says. As the breeding season approaches, the frogs return to
the breeding waters. Like other frogs, the common frog always searches every year for the
same water. The males stay in groups and watch the sun, so that their white throats are clearly
visible.

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Facts
- The Common frog can reach 2.4 to 3.5 inches or 6.1 to 8.9 cm in length and around
0.8 ounces or 22.7 grams of weight. Females are slightly larger than males.
- The Common frog can be olive green, brown, greyish brown or yellowish coloured. It
has dark spots on the legs and back, chevron-like marking on the back of the neck and
dark spots behind the eyes. The bottom of the body is white or yellow and sometimes
covered with brown or orange speckles.
- The Common frog is a carnivore.
- The Common frog has many natural enemies because of its small size. Fish and birds
usually hunt for tadpoles and eggs, while ermine, weasels, gulls, ducks, storks, herons
and snakes hunt adult frogs. People are not really an enemy because they do not need
them / like them. Common frogs is not an endangered species.
- Females lay about 4000 eggs in large clusters.
- It can survive 7 to 8 years in the wild.
- The Common frog actually is the most common frog in the world.
- They can typically hold their breath anywhere between 4 and 7 hours!
- During the breeding season common frogs do not feed at all.
- It is one of the most know amphibian in Britain.
- Males arrive at breeding pools before females.
- Temperature affects the frogspawn.
- The bones form a ring when the frog is hibernating, just like trees do. Scientists can
use these rings to figure out the age of a frog.

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Sources
https://www.froglife.org/info-advice/amphibians-and-reptiles/common-frog-2/

https://freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/pond-clinic/identifying-creatures-pond/amphibians-reptiles-pond/

https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/true-frogs-
ranidae

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/true-frog

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/true_frog.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_frog

http://kiddyhouse.com/themes/frogs/

http://www.kidzone.ws/lw/frogs/facts1.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_frog

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/other-garden-wildlife/amphibians-and-
reptiles/common-frog

https://biologywise.com/digestive-system-of-frog-with-labeled-diagram

http://animals.mom.me/respiration-frog-vs-tadpole-3518.html

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/search/FrogNotes1.html

https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Engineering/Courses/En123/MuscleExp/Frog%20Respiration.
htm

https://www.dkfindout.com/us/animals-and-nature/amphibians/inside-frog/

https://jhwildlifefilm.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/eye-wonder-10-things-you-didnt-know-about-
frog-eyes/

http://animals.mom.me/produces-slimy-feeling-frog-3382.html

http://www.thefrog.org/biology/smell/smell.htm

http://animals.mom.me/sensory-organs-found-frogs-head-3278.html

http://www.discoverwildlife.com/british-wildlife/how-tell-difference-between-frog-and-toad

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kikkers#Zintuigen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_hearing_and_communication

http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/cycle.html

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/58734/0

http://www.softschools.com/facts/animals/common_frog_facts/2385/

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