Look At Nature---The Frog! Traditional Cache
Look At Nature---The Frog!
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Parking can be found at 42.57.432 079.16.792
Please bring your own pen. Please only trade your favorite insects or amphibians. There are 12 or so different frogs in this cache.
Amphibians have been around for an estimated 350 million years. The earliest known frog appeared about 190 million years ago, during what is known as the late Jurassic period.
The classification of frogs is:
Phylum: Chordata
Sub-phylum: vertebrata
Class: amphibia
Order: Anura
Family: different depending upon the type of frog
Genus: different depending upon the type of frog
Species: different depending upon the type of frog.
Toads and frogs are amphibians, and the word "amphibian" comes from Greek words meaning "double life." This refers to the fact that during a frog's life, it lives both in the water and on land -- one of the reasons we find amphibians so fascinating. The amazing change, or "metamorphosis" -- that happens in a frog's life follows this pattern:
In the spring, male frogs and toads move to watery breeding sites and start calling to attract females and, in some cases, to warn other males to keep away from their territories.
Once a male and female pair up, the male clasps the female in a piggyback position called amplexus, releasing his sperm as she releases her eggs. The eggs are fertilized outside the female's body.
This mass of soft, jelly-coated eggs, often numbering in the hundreds or thousands, often sticks to water plants or other vegetation. The eggs hatch into tiny fish-like tadpoles that have gills, like fish, to allow them to breathe while in the water.
The tadpole usually grows quickly, swimming around and eating algae or tiny organisms in the water.
Legs sprout from the tadpole's body, and the tadpole's tail becomes smaller, actually being absorbed into the body. The tadpole also develops lungs to allow it to breathe out of water. Its intestines change from a long coiled gut to a short gut, to accommodate the change in diet from a grazing tadpole to a meat-eating frog. It is thought during metamorphosis that the immune system is largely shut down to accommodate all the physical changes. Tadpoles are especially susceptible to disease and parasite attacks at this time.
Many tadpoles are eaten by fish, birds or other frogs -- but the ones that survive these early stages continue their transformation into adult frogs that can move out of the water and live on land.
In the spring, adult frogs move into the water again to mate and the cycle starts all over again.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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Treasures
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