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Frida the tadpole now has 4 legs and less of a tail than she did yesterday. I knew how all of this was supposed to work, but even so it has been surprising just how quickly the transformation has taken place. Her back legs showed up overnight a few nights ago. The next morning, one front leg appeared. By that afternoon she had all four legs. That was two days ago. Her tail has shrunk by half since then, absorbed back into her body. It really is an amazing process to watch. Now she'll be eating tiny insects instead of lettuce. We have stocked her critter cage with lots of tiny baby crickets, which were raised from eggs in another critter keeper. We keep the adult crickets in that one, which are meant to be fed to our predaceous diving beetles. Here is a picture of Frida just a few days ago:
I have been thinking that Frida is some kind of toad, but this video is making me wonder if Frida may be some sort of a tree frog. I guess I'll have to do some reading up on frog/toad identification to figure out what she/he is. After watching the video a second time, it seems as if all the tadpoles turn out to be toads. The first one they show looks very similar to ours here, minus the spots.
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