Happy Mystery Monday! Can you guess what is pictured in photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is bullfrog, Lithobates catesbeiana, pictured below:
Bullfrogs are amphibians native to the eastern United States, and are the largest North American frog, weighing up to one pound and measuring up to 8 inches long.
Bullfrogs are brown to green in color, often with dark brown spots. The female bullfrog has a white chin while the male has a yellow chin.
Females lay thousands of eggs, as many as 20,000, during the Summer breeding season. Bullfrogs begin their lives as totally aquatic larvae, or tadpoles, with gills and a pronounced tail. Their legs soon develop, the tail and gills are absorbed, and the tadpole transforms into a terrestrial, air-breathing animal.
Named because their call resembles a cow mooing, bullfrogs can be heard from half a mile away. They are ambush predators and will eat almost any animal they can capture and swallow. During the Winter season, bullfrogs hibernate in mud and leaf litter at the bottom of ponds, lakes, or the slow-moving portions of streams and rivers.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.
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