A MEXICAN LEOPARD FROGPassing by a pond emerald green with algae, a leopard frog was spotted a few feet from the bank. On my hikes typically critters fly or jump away before I can unstrap my backpack, bring out the camera and wait for it to hum and click before it can take a picture but this time I did all that and the frog still sat there. I took pictures closer and closer until he filled my entire viewer. You can see the resulting portrait below:
Who knows why this frog didn't jump? He did when he was prodded. Maybe he was a philosopher frog. Anyway, he looks pretty much like the US's Northern Leopard Frogs, except that his body is grayer than I'm used to. Back at the computer I was shocked to see that Northern Leopard Frogs have been shifted from the nice genus Rana to the harder-to-remember Lithobates. Moreover, leopard frog taxonomy is so poorly understood that most authors refer to the frog in the picture as "belonging to the LITHOBATES PIPIENS Complex," meaning that probably several species are involved, but no one has figured them all out yet. |
