Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Bad weather puts tadpoles off turning into frogs
The frog is an amphibian when they become adults. Adult frogs lay thousands
of eggs in the water to counter the range of predators that eat spawn and
tadpoles. When the surviving eggs hatch, tadpoles come out. They swim around
where they were born and eat nearby plants filtered by the water for a few
weeks. During this stage, hind legs and a long tail will appear on the outside
while the lungs start developing on the inside, which allows them to breathe
out of the water when they become frogs. Over the next 14 weeks, the tadpole
will do a whole heap of growing until it eventually becomes a froglet.
Incredibly, tadpoles can control the rate of their transformation into frogs.
In situations where they could be in danger from predators or environmental
pressures, they can speed up the process to escape and move safely. On the
contrary, if the temperature is too cold, for example, they could delay their
transformation for up to a year. Recently, tadpoles in a river in North
West England were found to delay their transformation into frogs due to bad weather.
Observers hope that they survive the winter and become healthy frogs next
spring.
Read the article and learn how tadpoles survive and grow into adults in
the water.
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