Amid a daily percussion of artillery fire and munitions explosions, a rare amphibian migration began at Fort Bragg in early March. Carolina gopher frogs emerged from their underground burrows and hopped a mile or so to seasonal ponds. from the Charlotte Observer

THURSDAY, Jan. 7 -- For the first time in the United States, doctors have spotted an outbreak of Salmonella linked to African dwarf frogs, typically kept in home aquariums.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the...

A herbicide that contaminates the water consumed by millions of Americans has been found to produce gender-bending effects in male frogs.

Thirty species of frog have been wiped out from the El Copé National Park in Panama.

They may not be the best-smelling homes, but Asian elephant dung piles provide certain frog species with shelter, one researcher has found. Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz of the University of Tokyo found the dung-dwelling frogs in Sri Lanka's Bundala National Park, while searching for signs that Asian elephants acted as ecosystem engineers in their environments.

AP - Finding a new animal species is a special moment for scientists and even better when one hops into their mountain camp and volunteers to be discovered. An international team of researchers was camping in the Foja mountains of Indonesia when herpetologist Paul Oliver spied a frog sitting on a bag of rice in the campsite.

An international team of researchers was camping in the Foja mountains of Indonesia when they discovered an unknown type of long-nosed frog at their campsite.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Finding a new animal species is a special moment for scientists and even better when one hops into their mountain camp and volunteers to be discovered. An international team of researchers was camping in the Foja mountains of Indonesia when herpetologist Paul Oliver spied a frog sitting on a bag of rice in the campsite....

The world's most ancient frogs may soon be mined to extinction, if the New Zealand government's plans to open up a conservation area for mining go ahead, conservation biologists warn.

Freakish frog unleashes hidden claws if threatened.

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Salt Lake Tribune

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By Ellen Gibson (Bloomberg News)

A 31-state salmonella outbreak first detected in Utah was linked to pet frogs, U.S.

The world's most ancient frogs may soon be mined to extinction, if the New Zealand government's plans to open up a conservation area for mining go ahead, conservation biologists warn.

Sometimes divers, to their own painful dismay, do belly flops. But did you ever see a frog belly flop? That's just what primitive living frogs do, according to a new study1 by Dr. Richard Essner, from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in the US, and colleagues, looking at the evolution of frog jumping and landing. They found that frogs became proficient at jumping before they perfected landing.

Researchers from the Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia (they really like Darwin there, apparently) thought they had schemed up a clever way to study how Australian Green Tree Frogs regulate their body temperature.
They surgically implanted temperature-sensitive radio transmitters inside the frogs’ bellies, but months later when they went to retrieve the frogs, the scientists found the transmitters scattered on the ground. Like so many great scientific discoveries, the researchers eventually went from “huh?” to “aha!” according to Nature News:
Researchers have discovered that these amphibians can absorb foreign objects from their body cavities into their bladders and excrete them through urination.

As I have explained in various blog posts and in this paper, it is a fallacy to assume that any one character found in a so-called "primitive" species alive today was also found in the ancestral species. All living species are modern species, and "primitive" vs. "derived" refers to characters, not whole species.

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San Francisco Chronicle

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The Associated Press

(ATLANTA) - Pet frogs are being blamed for a national salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 48 people.
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Looks like frogs learned to leap before mastering landing, according to a video study of jumping frogs

As I have explained in various blog posts and in this paper, it is a fallacy to assume that any one character found in a so-called "primitive" species alive today was also found in the ancestral species. All living species are modern species, and "primitive" vs. "derived" refers to characters, not whole species.

Amphibians learned to jump first, then mastered the touchdown.

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Amphibians evolved approximately 250 million years ago and live on every continent on earth except for Antarctica. Their long-standing history is now in jeopardy, at least in the case of frogs, from various threats including fungus, chemicals in the environment and human encroachment.

The Newsroom - Finding a new animal species is a special moment for scientists and even better when one hops into their mountain camp and volunteers to be discovered.

Amphibians shake tree branches to warn their rivals

Three rare frog species that make nests in which to lay their eggs.

pilsner.urquell writes "40 previously unidentified species were discovered inside the crater of an extinct volcano on Papua New Guinea. The finds include a hairy caterpillar, an iridescent beetle, a striped possum, and what may be the world's largest rat — the size of a 'well-fed cat,' and showing no fear of man. The extinct volcano Mount Bosavi last erupted more than 200,000 years ago." There are also an audio interview with the expedition leader and a gallery with 15 photos of the new species.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The evolution of a group of muscled frogs scattered throughout Asia is telling geologists about the sequence of events that led to the rise of the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau starting more than 55 million years ago.
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