Introduction: As the most common amphibian in daily life, I believe that everyone is no stranger to frogs, especially some friends who live in rural ponds may also be on the occasion of summer, for the small river and small ditch in the frog courtship sound is annoying to death, but like when you were a child, you may have caught some small tadpoles and the like, put into some bottles and cans to raise, will also catch some small frogs to tease and play, but the species mentioned today may subvert everyone's general understanding of the frog this creature, Suddenly, the cognition of frogs as small animals suddenly became behemoths.
At this time, some people may ask, isn't a frog just a frog? Why is it related to behemoths? The biggest frogs I usually see in the countryside, such as toads, can grow to the size of a human fist, and some even have the size of half a brick, so is there a frog bigger than this? Well, of course there is, he is the protagonist of today, the African giant frog.
The African giant frog was first discovered in 1906 by a belgian biologist George Borrenger in the original forest of Cameroon when he was surprised to find a very large frog, after a period of investigation, George found that this giant frog food source is very rich, insects, crustaceans, molluscs, and even fish are its food, and even in some cases, he will prey on some small mammals, and even other amphibians, such as salamanders , small mice, etc., it can be seen that the size of this giant digging can be said to be very large compared to other frogs, and the recipe is different from other frogs.
George found in the subsequent investigation that the local Africans will catch this giant baby as prey to eat, George named it the African giant net, it also has a nicknamed giant harmonic frog, and later under the identification of biologists in various countries, it was finally determined that this African giant frog is indeed the world's largest frog species.
Although the size is huge, in fact, the requirements of the African giant frog for its growth environment are very harsh. Unlike other species of frog species, the African giant frog can only live in rivers and waterfalls in the tropical rain forest, and it is a relatively turbulent river, the water quality is very clear, the water temperature is also required, it needs to be between 16 and 23 degrees Celsius, and there must be sufficient food around it that matches his body size needs.
Not only that, once the environment around the African giant frog changes, then it will also die directly, that is, the African giant frog's adaptability to environmental changes is very poor, and because the African giant frog has such profound environmental requirements, the distribution range of the African giant frog is also very rare, only in the southern part of Cameroon and the northern equatorial Guinea, these relatively hot and humid primary forests and rivers are distributed, so the African giant frog is also a fairly rare species.
With its harsh living environment is the same, the African giant frog spawning requirements are also relatively harsh, and its huge size of the same their eggs are also much larger than the eggs of other frog species, adult African giant frog body length of about 17 ~ 32 cm, weight can also reach 1 ~ 7 pounds, so the eggs laid by African giant frogs are the size of goose eggs, nutrients are also very rich, which also leads to other animals for african giant frog eggs salivating, For this reason, African giant frogs will either spontaneously find a small hole or build their own nest when laying eggs, or lay eggs in the rushing river.
Even if the eggs are successfully hatched, the small tadpoles do not have any self-protection ability, and adult African giant frogs need to constantly guard the vicinity of their nests to prevent their defenseless offspring from being eaten by other animals, but in recent years, the number of African giant frogs has declined, not only because of natural enemies and so on, but mainly from humans.
Because the locals catch giant frogs as a delicacy, eating African giant frogs in large cities such as Yaoundé and Douala in the local area is even a fashion symbol, whether it is a party or a wedding, almost all of which will have a food made of African giant frogs, but more serious than that, the change in the living environment caused by human damage to the environment has led to a sharp decline in the number of African giant frogs with poor adaptability to changes in the living environment. The rising global temperature caused by the greenhouse effect and the pollution of water quality by local industries are one of the main reasons for the decline in the number of giant frogs in Africa.
Summary: At the end of the 20th century, the African giant frog was still everywhere in the local area, but since entering the 21st century, photos of the life of african giant frogs are difficult to find even on the Internet, so african giant frogs are also listed as endangered species. People have also begun to protect the living environment of the African giant frog, such as the establishment of natural habitats and protected areas, as well as national parks in the country. Biologists were sent to artificially protect and breed African giant frogs, and at the same time, relatively relevant laws and regulations were formulated for the smuggling of African giant frogs abroad.