Did you know that frogs play a central role in many ecosystems? While they are the main course for many animals, we have also learned that these little guys help control the insect population in their area. They eat a lot and do their job for long periods of time while holding it in for some reason.
As a result of their herculean efforts, frogs need to let out some big ones from time to time. In this article, you will get to know how frogs do their “business” and what it entails quite well.
Do Frogs Poop?
So you might be thinking, since they take in food so weirdly, do frogs even poop like us? I have learned that the answer would be yes, with there being only a few animals that don’t poop, like face mites, jellyfish, and tardigrades. They excrete waste in a different way or not at all compared to our more well-known amphibian friends.
I think it’s cool not to have to poop as an adaptation. It certainly would have saved me a lot of trouble in the past.
Expert Tip: Speaking of adaptations, did you know that frogs can drop really massive loads but aren’t bothered by them at all? That means that they could eat a whole lot more than we could, relatively speaking, hold it in for a while and be fine with dropping a humongous deuce..
No pain, guaranteed. It is quite fascinating and works well with their ways of surviving too. Their bodies can store a lot of fat that can help them survive long periods of scarcity, along with other novel adaptations for different species living in different environmental niches.
I think they’re pretty amazing in their own way, that while our bodies’ adaptations are towards brainpower, theirs is towards bodily endurance. They survive through tribulations by sheer grit alone, which is quite inspiring.
What Does a Frog Turd Look Like?
Since we’re talking about their “business”, we might as well get into the nitty-gritty details of what they look like. Frog turds, like most of their kind, are brown or black, icky and semi-solid. They come out rather large for their body size as well. There is nothing much about it that we can write home about.
Is There a Distinction Between Toad and Frog Poop?
There is a saying in medieval alchemy, “In sterquiliniis invenitur”. I have found its meaning to be, “In dung, it will be found”. That which we least want to look at contains answers to our problems. Frog poop is one such example, which, to our eyes, is unremarkable filth that we avoid.
And indeed, there is more to it than we see. Though we’ll have to really look beyond their appearance and pay attention to their entire being. This sounds difficult to imagine, but I’m with you in this article to help answer your queries and quandaries!
Now then, our froggy friend with a different appearance and general movement pattern is sometimes called a “toad”. Toads usually have short legs and prefer to walk or crawl rather than jump to their destination. They are also usually drier and are often found far from water from time to time.
This name isn’t really anything formal, more of a weird name for a variation of a frog. Heck, we don’t even know where the word really came from, you know, like most words. I find the origins of words quite interesting. After all, what we speak is the language of those who have come before us.
Anyway, there are true toads called Bufonidae, and those guys are pretty cool too. So we can see that toads are actually frogs, but frogs aren’t toads. Kinda like how squares are rectangles, but rectangles are not squares, but weirder. Though frogs and toads are pretty much the same, toads do grow to a rather hefty size.
Hence, their “business products” are also larger in conjunction with their size. These big boys eat a whole lot more after all.
Do Frogs Transmit Diseases?
Knowing their “business” behavior, we’ve discovered that they also carry a nasty bacteria called salmonella on their bodies. This also applies to turtles and other amphibian and reptile species commonly kept as pets. Those nasty buggers can cause quite a lot of trouble for kids.
Especially if they come into contact with them and forget to wash their hands afterward. Adults can also be affected badly, but not as badly as children can be. But it’s a different story if their immune systems are compromised.
Besides that, their excrement is also a carrier of bacterial diseases and parasites, so if you own a pet frog or toad, and its droppings are unusually textured, it might be sick. For good measure, you should consult a veterinarian about it.
Dealing with and recognizing frog poop danger is serious business, after all. Don’t worry too much about it though, as frog brand “products” aren’t all bad.
Expert Tip: Are you aware that their skin and secretions have been and are being used for varied medicinal purposes since ancient times and even today? And that frogs themselves are a treasure box of knowledge for understanding ourselves and the world around us?
You might ask, what sorts of wondrous things could possibly be hidden behind their froggy exterior?
Here’s some cool stuff that I’ve found about them
Did you know? At some point, frogs were used as pregnancy testers. It was called the “Hogben test” and it was the first mainstream pregnancy test in the western world in the 1940s and 60s. Women who were eligible for it had to have their pee injected into this specific species of frog called Xenopus.
Those frogs will lay eggs if the women are positively pregnant, and do nothing if the result is negative. Sounds hilarious, doesn’t it? I mean, imagine a doctor injecting pee into a frog, plopping it into a tank, and watching it to see if it would lay eggs for hours on end.
Even funnier is the fact that someone did this live exhibition and live-streamed the “performative experiment”, as Dr. Eben Kirksey called it, on the morning of August 29, 2012.
Besides the hilarity of what people do with them, there is quite a lot of medicinally potent stuff found mainly in toads and some frogs.
We have learned that Asian and American tribespeople of the past and even today make use of their skin and specific secretions to treat inflammation, hemorrhages, bites and stings, skin and stomach disorders, and even several kinds of cancer! Amazingly beneficial creatures, wouldn’t you agree?
Frogs drink water from their skin, specifically through their belly and the underside of their thighs. Unfortunately, that means they are very vulnerable to pollution and radical environmental changes caused by our fellow humans. This has caused some rare species of frogs and toads that would have helped us immensely to go extinct.
It’s a sad state of affairs if you ask me. Here they are, serving as our unwitting benefactors, yet some of us carelessly destroy where they live. The least that we can do is to give them a place to live in peace.
Overall, frogs are used in various fields of scientific research, especially concerning their bodily functions and how they help in understanding how ours work with their aid. In medical, biology, neurological research, and more, these amphibians help advance humanity’s progress in more ways than we can imagine.
Is frog poop good for plants?
The short answer is yes. The long answer, I have found, is rather interesting. Rice farming is very difficult and labor-intensive, wouldn’t you agree? Speaking from first-hand experience, farming, in general, is If you fail to take so many things into account, and you don’t have anything else to rely on but what you farmed, then you will starve.
Agro-ecological farming methods, we have found, have been around for a long time in various countries, especially developing ones. The ones with the addition of frogs have not seen much attention. Although I have found promising research on its viability.
Expert Tip: Suffice it to say, if we add the presence of frogs along with the other kinds of aquatically viable animals, we can increase the yields of rice crops.
It’s also cool that they pretty much guard the crops against insect interlopers and their excrement, which is the product of their efforts to fertilize the fields quite well, and even give them the nutrients they need to grow tall and strong.
In a win-win situation, we would get all the pest control guys we need for the job and they would get to eat their fill.
Frogs are very competent in their roles and “business”. Not only does their presence help the environment maintain equilibrium, but their secretions and excrement do a lot of good too! Frogs are a force of nature. As we make use of their talents, we must also care for them and their habitats.
After all, their environment is also our environment. It is only right for us, their beneficiaries, to treat them with respect, for they are as dangerous as they are helpful. Their wondrous qualities help shed light on the mysteries of science. I hope this article helps answer your questions. Bye!
