Which frog can fly. Javan flying frog (lat. Rhacophorus reinwardti) Description of the giant flying frog
We know from school that millions of years ago the Earth was inhabited by all kinds of dinosaur dinosaurs.
Among them were not only crawling and swimming ones, of which, of course, the majority, but also a small part of flying ones.
Despite the fact that there were also quite a lot of flying species, they were united by one thing: common feature- membranous limbs-wings.
Long before the appearance of feathers, these creatures could plow the airspace.
The outcome of dinosaurs is sad. As a result ice age they all became extinct, without exception. Both land giants and wind lords. Then it was the turn of smaller animals, and the sky went into the power of the birds.
It seems that there is much more to be improved - there are no more skillful birds, but nature continues to experiment and again and again tries to send initially flightless creatures into flight.
The proverb “those born to crawl cannot fly” is unknown to nature. This is how the frogs Rhacophorus Nigropalmatus or, as they are also called, Wallace’s Flying Frog were born.
Discovered in 1869 in the jungles of Malaysia and Borneo by Alfred Russel Wallace, these frogs live exclusively in trees. They descend to the ground only to mate and lay eggs.
Webbed feet allow frogs to glide through the air from branch to branch, covering distances of up to 15 meters. Watching how these creatures move, thoughts flash through my head that another couple of thousand years will pass, and the struggle for the air spaces will begin again, this time between birds and new pterodactyl frogs.
Rhacophorus nigropalmatus
Black-legged flying frog
One of the most beautiful and graceful frogs in the world, the black-legged flying frog is common on the Malacca Peninsula, Thailand, as well as on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Inhabits primary tropical rain forests.
This is a real “flying frog”; it makes long gliding jumps, thus moving not only from tree to tree, but also from the crowns to the ground, to breeding sites. To lay eggs, groups of frogs gather around small muddy ponds. Nests, which are large foamy lumps with eggs, are attached by frogs to plants or simply to clods of dirt hanging over a pond. When hatching, the tadpoles end up directly in the pond, and the muddy, dirty slurry is quite suitable for them.
A large tree frog with an elongated slender body, large eyes and huge webbed feet, this Racophorus immediately captivates with its appearance. Wide suckers are developed on all fingers, the membrane on both the hind and front paws reaches the very suckers.
The membrane is also developed on the back of the forearm; a small rounded skin rim also surrounds the heel. The back is bright light green, the sides are yellow with a pattern of thin black stripes, the belly is light cream. Large eyes have light cream irises. But the main coloring is provided by the membranes. They are bright yellow with large blue-black triangular spots between the toes. Males reach 8 - 9 centimeters in length, females - 9 - 10. Tadpoles are round or oval, with a short tail. The body is gray above and white below. The tail has black spots, both on the muscles and on the fin fold, the upper edge of the fin fold is trimmed black stripe. Length up to 5 cm.
Rhacophorus prominanus
Flying speckled frog
This beautiful tree frog is common on the Malay Peninsula, where it is found in Thailand and Malaysia. Inhabits mountain tropical forests, where it is found on branches and leaves around puddles and forest ponds. Nests for eggs, which frogs build from their own mucous secretions, are attached to leaves above water bodies.
The frogs are medium-sized, males are about 6 centimeters long, females are about 7.5 cm long. The eyes are large, raised high, with a golden iris and a horizontal pupil. The eardrum is clearly visible. Large rounded suckers and membranes are equally well developed on both the front and hind legs. Small membranes are present on the outer side of the forearm and hand, as well as the lower leg and foot.
The skin on the back is smooth, with small sparse tubercles, on the belly it is rough and bumpy. The color of the dorsal side of the body is from light to dark green with a reddish tint and numerous small light or dark specks. The membrane on the front paws is light green, on the hind paws the inner part of the membrane is yellow, the outer part (between the 3rd to 5th toes) is bright red. The belly is yellowish.
Rhacophorus reinwardti
Javan flying frog, Javan copepod
Distributed on the islands of Indonesia. Inhabits humid mountain forests, most spends time in the trees. The copepod is associated with bodies of water only during the breeding season. It constructs incubation nests from foam on leaves hanging over the water.
Thus, the tadpoles find themselves in the water immediately after hatching. The body is slender, the eyes are large with a horizontal pupil.
A very developed membrane is stretched between the toes of the front and hind limbs. It is used when making gliding jumps from tree to tree.
Body length up to 7.5 centimeters. The color of the dorsal side is intense green, the ventral side is bright yellow. In young people, blue spots appear on the membranes between the fingers and in the armpits, which disappear with age.
“Those born to crawl cannot fly” - this is clearly not a note about our hero. Of course, only birds are capable of real flight, and all other animals (mammals, reptiles and amphibians) are only capable of soaring in the air, using all sorts of devices for this.
Javan flying frog (lat. Rhacophorus reinwardti) (eng. Reinwardt's Flying Frog)
Here are some types tree frogs got them. Thanks to the huge membranes on their hind and front legs, they can glide in the air over a distance of several tens of meters. The membrane area of the Javan flying frog from the islands of Java and Sumatra can reach 19 square meters. cm.
But this is not the only frog that can fly. Many members of the family of copepods or copepods are capable of this. We have already written about one of them - this is Wallace's flying frog from the island of Borneo. In total, this family includes 231 species, included in 10 genera. They all live in tropical forests Southeast Asia, the Malay Archipelago, Central and South Africa, as well as on the island of Madagascar. Almost all lead an arboreal lifestyle.
Photo by Jodi J. L. Rowley Our heroine lives in the mountainous regions of the islands of Sumatra and Java, which is why she got her name.
Outwardly, it is very similar to that famous flying frog from the island of Borneo, but still has its own distinctive features. Firstly, the presence of a leathery keel along the ridge, and secondly, in adult individuals there are no membranes on the hind and front legs dark stripes or stains.
Photo by Takeshi Ebinuma The length of adult individuals does not exceed 7.5 centimeters. Females are larger than males. The body is slender, legs are long. The color is bright - the back is rich green, and the belly is bright yellow or orange. In young individuals, the webbed feet and axillary areas are covered with dark purple or blue spots, which disappear with age (sometimes there are barely noticeable spots between the 4th and 5th toes of the hind legs).
There are special swellings on the fingers that act as suction cups when landing on a vertical surface. An important role is also played by the insertion cartilages-shock absorbers between the last phalanges of the fingers, which help soften the landing.
Photo by Tim Laman Their larvae also have a slightly unusual structure. They have suckers on the front half of their belly, just behind the mouth opening. The tadpoles themselves are very long and can almost reach the size of their parents. The length of the tail alone reaches 4.5 centimeters. It is covered above and below with a wide leathery ridge.
Javan frogs can go into a kind of hibernation.
Their breeding season lasts quite a long time - from January to August, but it reaches a special peak in spring months– in March-April. After mating, the female moves closer to coastal plants. The place for laying eggs is chosen directly above the water, so that the tadpoles will be in the water immediately after hatching. But before this, she alone, and sometimes together with a partner, uses her paws to whip up a special foamy substance, where she lays her eggs. There are about 60-70 eggs in a clutch.
Family of copepods, or flying frogs
“One of the rarest and most interesting amphibians,” says Wallace, “which I found in Borneo, was a large tree frog, brought to me by a Chinese worker. He said that he saw the frog, as if swimming, fly off in an oblique direction from tall tree. On closer examination of the animal, I found that the very large toes of its hind feet were webbed to the outermost ends, so that, when spread out, they represented an area larger than that of the body. The toes of the front paws were connected in the same way by membranes, and finally the body could inflate significantly. The back and limbs had a shiny dark green color, the legs had dark transverse stripes, the lower body and inner toe were yellow, the swimming membranes were shaded with yellow and black stripes. The body length was approximately 19 cm, while the area of the completely spread membrane of each of the hind legs was 28, and all swimming membranes taken together were 81 cm2**.
* * By gliding in this way, copepods can fly over a distance of 10-12 m. When jumping on branches and trees, they use suction disks to stay on them. The intercalary cartilage-shock absorbers between the last phalanges of the fingers also play a certain role in “landing.”
Since the ends of the toes of the hind legs had special trailing pads that helped the animal to hold on and proved that it belonged to tree frogs, it is not entirely believed that these extensive membranes of the hind legs served only for swimming, and the Chinese story that this frog flew from a tree , acquires a known probability. Since then, this has been confirmed more than once by other European travelers.
As far as I know, this is the first example of a flying frog that deserves attention, since it shows that a change in the organization of the fingers, which could already be adapted for swimming and climbing, can go further and enable some species of amphibians to be carried through the air, like flying squirrels or flying lizards."
The frog which Wallace describes in the above words and in which he quite rightly saw a new, as yet undescribed species, is Borneo flying frog(Rhacophorus partialis), representative genus of copepods, or flying frogs(Rhacophorus), of which 42 species are now known: 30 from the southern and eastern Asia and 12 from Madagascar.*
* Currently, flying frogs are classified into an independent family, which includes 231 species from 10 genera.
All of them differ from green frogs by an inserted bone between the last and before the last joint of the toes of the hind legs; the outer end of the penultimate joint is also outside and, moreover, at the top of the back of the finger, characterized by the presence of a tubercle; the toes of the front legs are also almost always connected by swimming membranes. The fingers of both pairs of limbs are always equipped with trailing circles. In all other respects, these frogs are internal organization no significant differences they do not, although in appearance they look exactly like tree frogs and, like them, live on trees and bushes. The male has one or two internal resonator bubbles.
One of the forms related to the species, described by Wallace, is Javan flying frog(Rhacophorus reinwardti), a species common in the mountain forests of Java and Sumatra. This frog differs from its closest relative in having a leathery keel along the spine and hind legs, uncovered stripes; in young animals, large, dark blue spots on the swimming membrane of both front and hind legs during life and the same spots behind the elbow under the armpits. In animals that have reached 7.5 cm in length, remnants of these dark spots are present only between the fourth and fifth and at most between the third and fourth toes of the hind legs; in other places the spots disappear. During life, this beautiful frog is dark green in color and has a bright yellow belly.
According to Boulanger, the larva of this animal is very interesting, since there are round suckers on the front half of its belly behind the mouth opening. Its muzzle is elongated in a trunk-like manner, the respiratory slit lies on the right side of the body, closer to the end of the tail than to the end of the muzzle. The tail of this tadpole, equal to 4.5 cm, has a wide leathery ridge below and above. Nothing is yet known about the lifestyle of this larva.
Life of animals. - M.: State Publishing House of Geographical Literature. A. Brem. 1958.
“Those born to crawl cannot fly” - this is clearly not a note about our hero. Of course, only birds are capable of real flight, and all other animals (mammals, reptiles and amphibians) are only capable of soaring in the air, using all sorts of devices for this.
So some species of tree frogs have acquired them. Thanks to the huge membranes on their hind and front legs, they can glide in the air over a distance of several tens of meters. The membrane area of the Javan flying frog from the islands of Java and Sumatra can reach 19 square meters. cm.
But this is not the only frog that can fly. Many members of the family of copepods or copepods are capable of this. We have already written about one of them - this is Wallace's flying frog from the island of Borneo. In total, this family includes 231 species, included in 10 genera. All of them live in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, the Malay Archipelago, Central and Southern Africa, and also on the island of Madagascar. Almost all lead an arboreal lifestyle.
Photo by Jodi J. L. Rowley
Our heroine lives in the mountainous regions of the islands of Sumatra and Java, which is why she got her name.
Outwardly, it is very similar to that famous flying frog from the island of Borneo, but still has its own distinctive features. Firstly, the presence of a leathery keel along the ridge, and secondly, in adult individuals, the membranes on the hind and front legs do not have dark stripes or spots.
Photo by Takeshi Ebinuma
The length of adult individuals does not exceed 7.5 centimeters. Females are larger than males. The body is slender, legs are long. The color is bright - the back is rich green, and the belly is bright yellow or orange. In young individuals, the webbed feet and axillary areas are covered with dark purple or blue spots, which disappear with age (sometimes there are barely noticeable spots between the 4th and 5th toes of the hind legs).
There are special swellings on the fingers that act as suction cups when landing on a vertical surface. An important role is also played by the insertion cartilages-shock absorbers between the last phalanges of the fingers, which help soften the landing.
Photo by Tim Laman
Their larvae also have a slightly unusual structure. They have suckers on the front half of their belly, just behind the mouth opening. The tadpoles themselves are very long and can almost reach the size of their parents. The length of the tail alone reaches 4.5 centimeters. It is covered above and below with a wide leathery ridge.
Javan frogs can go into a kind of hibernation.
Their breeding season lasts quite a long time - from January to August, but it reaches a special peak in the spring month - in March-April. After mating, the female moves closer to coastal plants. The place for laying eggs is chosen directly above the water, so that the tadpoles will be in the water immediately after hatching. But before this, she alone, and sometimes together with a partner, uses her paws to whip up a special foamy substance, where she lays her eggs. There are about 60-70 eggs in a clutch.