Guest Author - MaryEllen Schoeman
Frogs officially have the coolest names ever. Giant Water-Holding Frog! Growling Tree Frog! There are frogs that are colored like mud, and frogs that are colored like jewels. There are even frogs with hair - Trichobatrachus robustus, common name Hairy Frog. And yes, all right, it’s not really hair, but still.
Frogs in general are a key indicator species – that is, when things begin to go wrong in the environment, it will show up early in frogs, before it begins to work its way up the food chain. This is because they are amphibians and absorb so much through their skin, making them much more vulnerable to changes in their environment. Frog populations worldwide are way, way down, and frogs are increasingly developing horrible deformities - frogs with one leg, frogs with an extra set of eyes on their backs, frogs with legs growing out of their mouths - all sorts of awful monster-movie mutations. At first this was thought to be due directly to pollution, but scientists have now discovered that there is in fact a virus that is causing mutations and killing off large populations of frogs, especially in South America. Pollution also plays a more direct role, as some of these mutations are caused by direct exposure to toxins in the water and air. Also, urban and suburban development is very harmful to frogs, since they get squished trying to hop across roads, and their normal migratory and mating patterns are disrupted, further reducing their populations. In South America, they also suffer depredations from the pet trade.
Because frogs are not cuddly, no one really wants to pay attention. And mammals are pretty far up the chain of development, so by the time whatever is mutating the frogs works its way up into the mammal zone and we start seeing mammal mutations, it will probably be too late.
In zoology, this problem is often called the "charismatic macrofauna" problem. It means that people in general are only concerned with large, good-looking animals, like lions and bears and antelope and other big (relatively big, that is, compared to frogs or one-celled creatures or whatnot) and compelling creatures. Therefore, frogs and bugs and worms and snails and fish are not considered worth saving or studying or paying attention to. People who freak out at the thought of logging a forest that is home to a type of owl have no problem with destroying the habitat of a small, uninteresting fish, for example. But it is small, close-to-the-earth kind of creatures who are often the first indicators that something is going wrong in the environment, and they are also often the basis for the entire food chain of the area - the frog population goes down, for instance, then the fish that eat the frogs start dying off, the things that eat the fish start dying, and so on. So if we really want to protect all species, we need to keep a close eye on the little guys, and treat them with the same care, attention, and concern as we do our fellow mammals.
