Litoria Caerulea (Northern Green Tree Frogs)

[AntaresiaLady]

hello all...

If there's a 'froggie' in here, maybe they can help.

My daughters frogs have both at varying times sat and kind of yawned-but several times in a row- and they seem to be 'inhaling'....like they're sucking in lots of air.
We are wondering what they're doing...we've seen them both do it.
Does anyone know of any Australian forums that deal with these frogs? Or do you know someone who keeps/breeds them?

And anyone got any tips on sexing them? !!

Thanks In Advance,

 

[beknluke]

http://frogs.org.au/community/

Good luck

 

[meshe1969]

Yep, we are friendly and helpful on the frog site!!

The Yawning is to do with them shedding, they will also "pump" up there bodies with air to stretch/loosen the skin before they shed, they look like little butter balls when they do that!!

They have to be around a year old, and then when they start croaking you will be able to tell. Males will call a lot, and will blow up there throats, Females don't make much noise at all.

 

[Sdaji]

The yawning, as meshe says, is probably related to sloughing, although sometimes they'll just yawn, much as we do (Most things yawn; cats, dogs, people, snakes, lizards, even fish ).

If you feed them up they can grow to full size in around four to six months and start calling even sooner. Both sexes can make a lot of noise but they sound different. The males start off sounding like a female but then take it a bit further. You can call to your frogs and they'll probably respond (you don't have to be good at it, I've often set them off just by talking on the phone etc and they'll respond to trains, planes, cars, fridge noises...). If you keep calling to a female while she is responding she will get highly excited and you'll see that she is going as hard as she can, but the 'male' part of the call won't come out. If you're calling to a male and he gets similarly excited you'll hear the difference. You can also sex them by looking for nuptial pads, which are only found on males (black things on their thumbs) and if you flip a girl on her back and look at her groin you should be able to see eggs through the transparent skin. These are often there even on quite young L. caerulea. The eggs look like spheres which are half black and half white.

 

[AntaresiaLady]

These ones are about 12 months old. They were 'cuddling' in the dealers tank, so my daughter wanted them!

The boy (or who we think is the boy) has a real deep croak, and he does it a lot at night (my daughter can usually get him to respond to her- she does the call near on perfect!). The girl has a habit of trying to jump out of their tank (she has escaped once already) She has a softer call, and she sits a lot with her neck extended and it kind of 'ripples' when she does it.

We would love for them to spawn- but we'll leave it to nature to decide if that will happen.

Thanks for the egg tip Sdaji. Will she always have those eggs there? (I mean even if she's not in season?)

 

[Sdaji]

I'm not really sure, but I've seem them in females at every time of year. Females which sit around and never breed seem to always have them.

 

[AntaresiaLady]

Thanks Sdaji. It might help us identify if we have a boy and a girl. .