I thought the French were doing quite well for themselves. Didn't know that people studied their skin for environmental reasons!!!! I learn new things each day :)
404 Million for FROGS??!!??!??
Just damn.
Another indication that the world has just gone completely insane.
(Just stop the French from eating frog legs, and the frog population will go up dramatically.)
A little girl walks up to her grandfather and says:
"Grandpa, can you make a sound like a frog?"
Grandpa says:
"Honey, why do you want me to do that?"
And the little girls says:
"Well, Daddy said that when you croak, we all get to go to Disney World!"
Nope. My end of the reserve has seen a tremendous resurgence of all toads, lizards, and frogs over the past five years.
We also have more snakes than I've seen in a decade and a lot more insects. We also have a lot more mice and rats. (Not the nasty city sewer rats. Just nice swamp rats. For some reason, they aren't afraid of humans either.)
Hmmmmm......I wonder. Do you think the fact that the drought ended here two years ago has anything to do at all with the resurgence of flora and fauna.
And the fact that there are no insecticides or pesticides used here and lots of bugs flourish?
(Yeah, yeah. I own stock in Cutters. Cases of it in fact.)
IUCN = CCCP
This fits my personal observation: Caddo Lake, a large, everglade-like, semi-natural body of water in Northeast Texas, was a very noisy place 25 years ago. There was a continuous chorus of "peeps" from tiny tree frogs, interspersed with the low, booming croaks of bullfrogs. Now, it is eerily quiet.
Since I "escaped my MA exile" in 2001, I have fished "Caddo" numerous times -- in near-total silence. A few months ago, we finally heard one (1) bullfrog!
There is much speculation as to the cause, but amphibians are now little more than a memory here in northeast Texas...