Do frogs guard their eggs?

addy1

water gardener / gold fish and shubunkins
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That photo looks like frog eggs, must have just been the shot angle. Ours never do a pile dump...............
 
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Actually I moved around some rocks and made a sort of circular barricade and placed both the eggs batches inside the barricade and covered the top with a big flat rock to protect them. We checked periodically to see their progress and noticed that more then 50% of the eggs turned white, indicating that they were infertile. Still, some did make it to tiny free swimming tadpole stage, but at about the same time, as predicted, my turtle started hanging around the rock barricade. I'm assuming he was waiting for any stragglers that happen to swim out of the barricade. Finally the eggs masses lost their tendency to stick together in a mass and sort of melted down in between the the gaps between the rocks, tadpoles and all, which was probably better for the young tadpoles as it meant the turtle couldn't reach them, however we never did see anymore tadpoles. It is possible a few are still alive somewhere in there, but even if they are it is very unlikely they will survive. My pond might seem like a very tranquil serene place for a human to sit beside and enjoy, but for a newly hatched little tadpole being in that water is virtually like being in a baby in a war zone, death waiting for you at any moment and little hope of survival.
The male frog continued to embrace the female frogs once in a while, but since they no longer have any eggs in them it doesn't last long and the females just hop away until he releases his embrace. Essentially telling the male frog that they aren't in the mood. :shifty:
 
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When I was a child, toads laid strings upon strings of eggs in my pond, and because it had no fish, they hatched in the hundreds. They fed off the algae in the pond and I threw an occassional earth worm in the pond which became fascinating to watch as it was one long string of thrashing tails as they fought for a place at the earthworm table.
 

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