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Let's finish off a very weird year and welcome in the new year with a basket of colorful frogs!\n\nThe northern leopard frog comes in many color morphs, all of them pretty:\n\n \n\nThe starry dwarf frog is also pretty and has an orange tummy:\n\n \n\nThe astonishing turtle frog:\n\n \n\n\xa0\n\nPoison dart frogs are colorful and deadly (blue poison dart frog, golden poison dart frog):\n\n \n\nThe tomato frog looks like a tomato that is also a frog:\n\n \n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nIt\u2019s the very last week of 2020, and good riddance. Let\u2019s kick the old year out the back door and welcome in the new year with a basket of pretty frogs. That\u2019s right, we\u2019ve got a frog episode this week!\n\nLet\u2019s start with the northern leopard frog, with thanks to an anonymous reviewer who gave the podcast a really nice five-star review and only signed the review \u201cnorhern lepord frong.\u201d I looked that frog up online to see what it looked like, and it\u2019s so pretty, honestly, it\u2019s just the prettiest frog! If you had a basket of northern leopard frogs, they might just look like friendly flowers, because while most are green or brown with darker spots, some are much brighter green with yellow markings, some are dark brown, and some are even pinkish white because of a rare albino trait. Its spots are outlined with yellow or light green and it has two folds of skin that run the length of the body and are sometimes yellow. These folds of skin are called dorsolateral folds and many frogs have them, although they\u2019re not always as easy to spot as in the northern leopard frog.\n\nThe northern leopard frog is native to the northern part of North America, especially southern Canada and the northern and western United States. It grows up to 4.5 inches long, or 11.5 cm, measured from snout to vent. As you may recall from previous frog episodes, that\u2019s how frogs are always measured. It basically just means nose to butt. Females are larger than males, which is also the case for most frogs.\n\nIt lives anywhere that it can find fresh water, including rivers, streams, creeks, ponds, marshes, even drainage ditches, but it prefers slow-moving or quiet water. As a result, it\u2019s threatened by loss of habitat, pollution, and climate change, all of which affect the water it needs to live, and it\u2019s also threatened by non-native animals and diseases. But while it doesn\u2019t live in as many places as it used to, right now it\u2019s doing fine overall and isn\u2019t considered endangered.\n\nLike most frogs, the northern leopard frog eats insects and any other small animal it can swallow. It has a long sticky tongue that it can shoot out so quickly that even an insect can\u2019t outfly it, but it doesn\u2019t just eat insects. It\u2019s a big frog with a big mouth, and it\u2019s been recorded eating other species of frog, small snakes, small birds, and even a bat. But mostly it eats insects, slugs, snails, and worms. Probably the frog that was documented as catching and eating a bat is famous in the northern leopard frog world, or at least it would be if real life was like the inside of my head and frogs had their own tiny newspapers.\n\nThe northern leopard frog was once considered a delicacy, with most frogs\u2019 legs coming from this particular species. It\u2019s also sometimes kept as a pet. It\u2019s mostly nocturnal and semi-aquatic, sometimes called the meadow frog because it will leave the water to hunt for food in grassy areas. It hibernates in winter but is better adapted to cold weather than a lot of frogs are.\n\nThere\u2019s also a southern leopard frog that looks very similar to the northern leopard frog but lives farther south, which you probably guessed from the name. It\u2019s also slightly larger than the northern leopard frog, up to five inches long, or 13 cm.\n\nMale leopard frogs, like many other frogs, have special vocal sacs in the throat that allow a male to make a loud call in spring to attract females. Different species of frog have different calls,