Andes marsupial frog facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Andes marsupial frog |
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The Andes marsupial frog (scientific name: Gastrotheca andaquiensis) is a special type of frog. It belongs to the Hemiphractidae family, which includes frogs that carry their young in a pouch. You can find this frog living on the Amazonian side of the Andes mountains in southern Colombia and Ecuador.
Contents
What Does It Look Like?
The Andes marsupial frog is quite a large frog for its kind. It can grow to about 77 millimeters (about 3 inches) long from its snout to its bottom. Its head has a rounded snout and its upper lip sticks out a little. It also has small pits below each nostril and blunt, horn-like bumps above its eyes.
The frog's eardrums, called tympani, are oval-shaped and easy to see. Its body is strong and covered in bumpy skin, with a mix of bigger and smaller bumps. On its back, near its shoulders, there is a deep opening that leads to a special pouch. This pouch is where the female frog carries her eggs.
The frog has small spines on its heels. Both its fingers and toes have sticky pads, which help it climb. Male frogs are usually brown, while females are green. However, their colors can change a lot. For example, a young male frog was once seen that was light green with a bronze tint. The frog's eyes have pale green irises, and its tongue and the inside of its mouth are blue. The sticky pads on its fingers and toes are jade green.
Where Does It Live?
The Andes marsupial frog lives only in Colombia and Ecuador, on the eastern side of the Andes mountains. It is an arboreal frog, meaning it lives in trees. You can find it in cloud forests, usually among the leaves near water. It prefers trees that have many epiphytic plants growing on them. Epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants, like mosses or ferns, but don't harm them. This frog lives at heights between about 1,100 and 2,000 meters (about 3,600 to 6,500 feet) above sea level.
Life Cycle and Reproduction
This frog is called a marsupial frog because the female carries her eggs and developing baby frogs in a pouch on her back, much like a kangaroo carries its joey. The female lays about ten large eggs at a time. After the eggs are fertilized, the male frog helps the female put them into her pouch.
Inside the pouch, the eggs grow directly into tiny frogs. This means they skip the tadpole stage that many other frogs have. When the baby frogs are fully developed, they simply hop out of their mother's pouch and start their lives on their own.
Is It Safe?
The Andes marsupial frog lives in a wide area and is fairly common in some places. The biggest dangers it faces are losing its home because of farm animals eating plants (livestock grazing) and land being used for growing crops. However, some of the areas where it lives are protected, which helps keep them safe.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has looked at how safe this frog is. They have decided that its conservation status is "least concern". This means that while its numbers might go down a little, it's not happening fast enough to be worried about it becoming endangered right now.
See also
In Spanish: Gastrotheca andaquiensis para niños
