If you think animals are amazing, the Earth Rangers Podcast is for you! The tadpole’s large intestine, important for digesting algae and plants, shrinks to suit the frog’s meat-eating diet.
The tadpole’s horny teeth, once used to tear up plants, disappear and tongue muscles develop to catch insects. They even go through changes that aren’t visible in these pictures. As you have just read, frogs go through a lot to get to this phase. Once its tail disappears, it will become an adult frog. This means it is ready to leave the water and live on land. At this point, the tadpole’s gills have disappeared, and its lungs have enlarged.
#Frog metamorphosis full#
When the tadpole reaches the froglet stage, it is almost a full adult. Froglet (or young frog) Flickr Credit: biverson The tadpole’s skull is made out of cartilage (the same stuff your nose and ears are made out of) but during metamorphosis, the cartilage is replaced with bone. You might also notice that the tadpole has started to form a frog-like face. Tadpole with front and hind legs Flickr Credit: the1ponyĪfter the hind legs have started to form, a pair of front legs will begin to develop and the tail will start to disappear. In this picture you can see the tadpole has started to grow hind legs. This means almost every organ has to change so the tadpole can go from living underwater to living on land as an adult frog.
Over about a 24 hour period, the tadpole develops into a frog. Tadpole with hind legs Flickr Credit: the1pony After a few weeks, a hormone in the tadpole’s thyroid gland initiates metamorphosis. Within a few days, the eggs develop into tadpoles. Depending on the species, these egg masses can be made up of several hundred eggs! Tadpole Each of those black dots is made up of a bunch of cells that will eventually grow into a tadpole.
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