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Frogs are amphibians, which means that they can live in water or on land. They go through several stages of life before they become adult frogs and during those stages, they live only in water.


cluster of frog eggs
Stage 1: Egg

A frog begins life as a fertilized egg. A female frog lays a lot of eggs at one time in a pond. The eggs float on water in a jelly mass or cluster. The eggs will soon hatch into tadpoles!


frog tadpole
Stage 2: Tadpole

When the tadpole hatches, it looks more like a fish than a frog. It doesn’t have any legs! It has gills that allow it to breathe underwater. The tadpole swims, eats plants and algae from the water, and grows for several weeks.

During this time, the tadpole starts to develop lungs so it will be able to breathe out of the water when it becomes a frog. The tadpole also starts to grow two hind legs. Now it can leap around instead of only swimming. Although the tadpole is sctarting to look a little more like a frog, it still has a very long tail!


life cycle of a frog
Stage 3: Young Frog

The tadpole grows two front legs and its long tail becomes shorter and shorter. The tadpole uses the nutrients stored in its tail as food, so until its tail is completely gone, it doesn’t need anything else to eat! Then just a little stub of its tail is left, and the tadpole is a young frog. It hops right out of the water and onto dry land for the first time! The frog is still very small.



Stage 4: Adult Frog

The frog’s tail will eventually disappear completely and it will start to eat insects instead of plants from the water. The young frog will grow for about 2-4 years to become an adult. The adult frogs then lay their eggs and more tadpoles hatch and begin the cycle again!
Of the three species of amphibian found in Ireland the common frog is by far the most familiar. Most people think of frogs as aquatic creatures, but in fact they spend most of their lives on land, only returning to the water in order to breed.

Adult frogs are from 6-10cm (2.4-4 inches) long. They are smooth skinned, tailless amphibians with powerful hind legs that are particularly well suited to jumping. The upper surface of the skin is variable in colour – ranging from a light yellowish brown to dark olive green. Some individuals even have a reddish tinge and almost black animals are not unheard of. Most animals exhibit a variable pattern of black or brown marks on the back and the species has a very distinctive brown patch behind each eye.

On the underside males tend to be a dirty white or pale yellow while females vary from pale yellow to orange. There are often brown speckles present in both sexes. Males tend to be slightly smaller than females and can be distinguished by the dark bluish-black nuptial pads – which are swellings on the first finger of their forelimbs. These swellings become much more pronounced during the breeding season and help the male to get a firm grip on the female’s smooth skin during mating.

Depending on the weather common frogs begin to emerge from hibernation in February or March and head straight for their freshwater breeding grounds. Males usually arrive before females and start croaking to attract a mate. Once females start to arrive the males start croaking in earnest and wrestle with each other to gain access to a potential mate. After overcoming his rivals a successful male will clamp himself to her back using his nuptial pads in a mating embrace known as “amplexus”. They may stay clamped together like this for days before spawning.
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