Life 1 – Young frogs live and grow in water

Life 2 – Full grown frogs live on land and in water

Frogs are cold blooded which means that a frogs temperature is the same as the surrounding temperature.

A frogs skin absorbs water so that they do not have to drink water to survive

Frogs have sticky tongues which they flip out to catch insects

Frogs do not chew, they swallow their prey in one piece. They only have teeth on their top jaw which makes it very difficult to chew.

Life cycle

The life cycle can be split into 5 categories

1. Eggs or Frogspawn

Frogs start life inside an egg in the water.

A single frog lays a lot of eggs – up to 4000

This is called frog spawn

The eggs absorb water, swell up and float to the surface of the pond/ puddle or lake where the sun warms them up.

2. Tadpoles

After about 10 days, tadpoles hatch from the eggs.

Tadpoles live in the water and breathe with gills.

Tadpoles have no legs, they swim with a tail.

Very young tadpoles feed on the yolk of the egg which they hatch from which remains in their guts.

At this stage they are vulnerable to being eaten by fish, birds or beetles

3 . Tadpoles With Legs

After around 5 weeks from being spawn, tadpoles grow back legs, then front legs – but they still have their tail

They begin to eat insects and plants

4 . Froglets

After 8 weeks a froglet looks like a small adult frog, it has 4 legs and breathes air with lungs – but it still has a stubby tail.

Soon it will leave the water and live on dry land.

5. Frog

A full grown frog has legs and lungs

It’s tail and gills are gone

Full grown frogs start the life cycle again when the females lay more eggs.

Each trip through the life cycle is called a generation.