How do little frogs spend the winter? A detailed explanation of frog overwintering methods

Frogs are amphibians. Common frog species in farmland include the black-spotted frog, the pond frog, the golden-lined frog, and the piebald toad. So how do little frogs spend the winter?

1. The living habits of frogs

Frogs generally live near water sources. Most frogs lay eggs and fertilize them in water; after the eggs hatch they become tadpoles, live in water, and then become young frogs that come onto land and move about. However, tree frogs have a different way of laying eggs. The eggs laid by the spotted-legged tree frog look like a mass of white soap foam, or like a mass of cream, stuck to aquatic plants.

Tadpoles generally feed on plant-based food such as diatoms and green algae. After maturing, they mainly eat insects, and also feed on some river snails, snails, small shrimp, small fish, and so on.

When the weather turns cold in late autumn, frogs lie dormant on the bottom of the water or in burrows to hibernate, and when the weather warms up in the spring of the following year they return to the water to breed.

2. How do little frogs spend the winter?

Little frogs choose to hibernate in ponds, tree holes, or mud holes to get through the winter, because frogs are cold-blooded animals. If the winter temperature is too low, they may freeze to death, so they need to spend the cold weather in a place where they can stay warm, and then come out to move about again after the temperature warms up.

3. The harm of eating frogs

1. Frog meat has no special nutrition, and eating too much of it can instead affect human health, because most frogs are wild. Crops are treated with relatively large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The increased amount and unreasonable application of pesticides cause pests to develop resistance, and frogs easily accumulate pesticides; when people eat them, the pesticides enter the human body;

2. Frogs also carry many parasites and bacteria, such as Gnathostoma spinigerum, Spirometra mansoni, and diplostomulum larvae. If you eat a frog that has parasites, the parasites migrate within the human body and cause harm to all parts of the body, especially the skin and muscle tissue; the parts where the parasites stop during migration form abscess nodules; when they migrate to the nervous system, they can cause inflammation of the brain and spinal cord.