{"id":158,"date":"2009-06-19T19:05:02","date_gmt":"2009-06-20T00:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/?p=158"},"modified":"2009-06-20T06:12:25","modified_gmt":"2009-06-20T11:12:25","slug":"tadpole-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/2009\/06\/tadpole-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"Tadpole Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tadpoles
Tadpoles - captured momentarily for this photo opp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There’s a ditch near my house that is home to MANY tadpoles. I stop and watch them every day on my walk. Earlier in the season I would have told you that they were probably either wood frog or peeper tadpoles since I saw both of those little spring singers in that ditch, but I’ve long since changed my mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why? I think these little swimmers are too big as tadpoles to grow into those small frogs. Also, they’ve been in the tadpole stage since early May<\/a>, and they’ve only just begun to sprout the smallest of hind legs in the last few days. Although my National Audubon Society<\/a> Field Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians doesn’t give me information about tadpoles, I think this is too long for wood frogs and peepers.<\/p>\n

I’ve worried about them several times, when the water in that ditch was dwindling, but they’ve lucked out each time with a nice rain.<\/p>\n

Most amazing of all is the visual for these spermy-looking critters. I first noticed it on my visit to the ditch in late May. It was also late in the afternoon – on my after-work walk with my dog. Some of the tadpoles were swimming up to the surface of the water — to eat, I assumed — and when they did, their little undersides were luminous! They were glowing orange! To me they looked much as bright and clear as the little orange nightlight I have near my bathroom.<\/p>\n

\"Tadpoles
Tadpoles glowing in the ditch<\/figcaption><\/figure>Well, I ran home and got my camera and tried to capture this amazing sight. Mostly I got nothing usable — this was the best I could do that afternoon.<\/p>\n

I did an online search for bioluminescent tadpoles, and the only reference I found was for a frog that lives out west somewhere. I did find one reference that said that wood frog tadpoles were iridescent.<\/p>\n

So I kept visiting the ditch daily, trying to figure out if what I was seeing was iridescence or luminescence. I couldn’t decide. So one day I captured some in a clear plastic container and drove them a few miles to my friend’s house. It was a dreary, rainy day, and the little guys were understandably more than a little freaked out by their kidnapping and transport. We looked at them for a bit and couldn’t decide, so I drove them back home and put them back in their ditch. (I’m guessing they had some great stories to tell their friends, but that they weren’t believed.)<\/p>\n

\"Tadpoles
Tadpoles aglow in the dish<\/figcaption><\/figure>Then today I got the brainstorm to go back to the ditch with the plastic container and my camera. If I could hold the plastic container up in the air with one hand and aim and focus the camera on the bottom of the container with the other, maybe I could capture their light. Although this photo isn’t wonderful and their color looks much more white than orange, I think you’ll get the idea that these are some pretty unusual tadpoles, indeed.<\/p>\n

I am truly hoping that someone who reads this post will know about these tadpoles, and can fill me in. Please post a comment and give me information!<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Peg Cherre, Executive Director<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a ditch near my house that is home to MANY tadpoles. I stop and watch them every day on my walk. Earlier in the season I would have told you that they were probably either wood frog or peeper tadpoles since I saw…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21],"tags":[35,12],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-reptiles-amphibians","tag-frogs","tag-tadpoles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pfeiffernaturecenter.org\/nature-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}