Bolivian bleating frog

The Bolivian bleating frog (Hamptophryne boliviana) is a frog that lives in Bolivia but also Venezuela, Peru, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia.  It lives in the Amazon River Basin.  They sometimes live with tarantula spiders.

Appearance

The adult male frog is about 3.2 cm long from nose to rear end.  The adult female frog is 3.2 to 3.8 cm long.

This frog is mostly brown with a white or pale belly.  The brown color on its back is much lighter in color than the skin on the sides of its head and body.  There is a medium-brown pattern on the middle of its back.  This frog looks like a dead leaf.

Actions

This frog hides during the day and looks for food at night.  It mostly stays on the ground instead of climbing trees like a tree frog or staying the water like a swimming frog.  It mostly stays in primary forest, though people sometimes see it in secondary forest or near the edges of forests.  People see them sitting on small plants.

This frog has many young at once.  The male frogs go to ponds where the water is not deep.  They go to ponds that are there all year and to ponds that dry up for part of the year.  The male frogs sing together for the females.  Some females can lay more than 2000 eggs at one time.

The tadpoles are about 3.0 cm long.

This frog mostly eats ants, but it will also eat beetles, earwigs, termites, other mites, and larvae.

Predators

Tarantulas can eat this frog.  So can the toad Ceratophrys cornuta.

Tarantulas

This frog sometimes lives with tarantula spiders in the species Xenesthis immanis.  Scientists think that the frogs eat ants that would eat the tarantula's eggs.

Name

This species is named after Mr. Eijiro Nagao.  Mr. Nagao was President of Japan's Marusan Securities Co. Ltd. The Nagao Environmental Foundation gave scientists the money to study amphibians in Sri Lanka.

References

Category:Frogs of South America