Spring has sprung in Toronto. People are enjoying it, and so are the frogs. This is love season, and with a little bit of luck, you can see and hear it in a pond near you.
Frogs are remarkable animals, regardless of whether it is in garlic sauce or in the water, but they surely are more lively in the water, and leopard frogs are no exception, especially during mating season. The mating season of the leopard frogs is in full swing, and it is hard not to notice.
Toronto is a big city, and as in all big cities, there are areas where there is not much else to see than buildings, but there are other areas as well, and in this, Toronto is particularly blessed. This is a green city with lots of natural spaces, and some of them have ponds. In a few of these, leopard frogs -the most common frogs in Toronto- are coming together to find a mate.
They are singing their hearts out to find mates. Leopard frogs are extremely easy to recognize. They have a green/brown body with irregular spots that are vaguely reminiscent of leopard spots, hence the name. The only frog they could be mixed up with are the Pickerel frogs, but these are not nearly as common in Toronto as leopard frogs.
Leopard frogs have rounded oval spots, where the spots of Pickerel frogs tend to be more squarish. Pickerel spots are usually arranged in two rows, whereas leopard frog spots are more randomly distributed.
They also have a very different mating call that is all but impossible to mistake for the leopard frog call.
Leopard frogs breed in early spring, i.e. right now, and they do so in ponds and larger bodies of water. They lay eggs in clumps of 1,000 to 5,000 that are attached to submerged vegetation and other objects. Tadpoles emerge about 9 days later. They are vegetarian, and have special mouths to feed on algae. They also have a long, coiled intestine that is typical for vegetarians.
It takes about 10 to 13 weeks for the tadpoles to metamorphose into froglets. This happens around the end of July when they are about 3.5cm long. With the tadpole stage behind them, they become carnivorous. They become sexually mature when they are 5-6cm long, at around 2 years of age. Leopard frogs live for about 4 years in the wild, but they are known to live up to 9 years in captivity.
Leopard frogs are not a threatened species in Ontario. Lots more can be said about leopard frogs, but the big news here is that we are right in the mating season and that you should go out and look for them if you can, for this is the type of spectacle most city dwellers only know from documentaries, not from reality.
