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3 Check It Out! 4 Trivia, Facts, and Scoops 6 The Spadefoot Toad 8 10 Fun Facts About Frogs 10 Salamander Crossing! 12 Puzzles 14 Frog vs. Toad 17 The Polka-Dotted Frog 18 A Real Live Frogsicle 19 Blow a Winter Bubble 20 The Poison Dart Frog 21 Amphibians 22 Max and Gracie 23 Disappearing Act! 24 Frog Cartoons 25 Be a Chorus for Us 26 Finding Frogs 28 Riddles & Rhymes 29 Kids Corner 30 Puzzle Solutions

hat is the most interesting thing you’ve ever read about frogs? You’ve probably eaten a Fudgsicle®. But have you ever heard of a frogsicle? No, it’s not something to eat, but it’s real. Check it out! VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE! After reading this issue about frogs, toads, and salamanders, tell us which you like best and why. We’ll send you something just for voting. You’ll discover a lot about frogs in these pages, but toads and salamanders are just as cool. They are included here too. All these animals are amphibians, which can have vivid, wild coloring. Newts and earthworm-like creatures called caecilians also belong to this class of animals. Don’t forget to send in your stories, poems, and artwork for Kids Corner. Write a letter to the editor, and tell us what you enjoy in the magazine. What would you like to see included in future issues?

NEW FEATURE: Find out how to become part of Zip’s Pen Pal Club on page 29! It’s fun and exciting!

Frogs, toads, and most salamanders hatch in water from soft eggs covered in a clear jelly. After hatching, they turn into tadpoles. With big heads, long tails, and no arms or legs, tadpoles look a bit like fish. They even have gills for underwater breathing. As amphibians grow older, the tails get shorter, limbs develop, and most develop lungs. Now they can live on land. These are special animals! Exploring: This is a frog tadpole. Toad and salamander tadpoles look very much like it.

Is It a Toad or a Frog? Toads usually have drier, bumpier skin than frogs. Toads are chubbier, and their legs are shorter. Most don’t have webbed feet.

Can You Get Warts from Toads? This is a popular myth, but don’t worry. You can’t get warts from a toad. But a toad’s skin does produce a liquid that’s bothersome to other animals. It’s harmless to humans, but it can irritate your eyes. So wash your hands after touching a toad.

There Are Many Kinds of Toads There are about 200 different kinds of toads. Some are as small as one inch long, and others are as large as nine inches long. A large toad can lay as many as 20,000 eggs at one time!

Toads Love Water During very dry seasons, toads dig deep into the soil to find moisture to help keep their bodies wet. They like to travel when it’s raining.

Oak Toad: One-inch-long oak toads are the smallest in North America.

Some Frogs Can “Fly” Well, not really, but they do the next best thing. They glide! The “parachuting” frogs of Asia can make 50-foot flying leaps. To glide from tree to tree, they flatten their bodies, spread the webbing between their fingers and toes, and jump.

Some Frogs Can Climb Trees Really! Tree frogs use tiny suction cups on the tips of their toes to climb trees and cling to them. Most tree frogs are small. Many are difficult to see because their skin is the same color as the trees they live in!

Male Frogs Have LOUD Voices Malabar Gliding Frog: Webbing between the fingers and toes of Malabar gliding frogs helps them “fly.”

Most female frogs are very quiet. It’s hard to hear them over the voices of the males. There are over 4000 species of frogs. Each type of male frog has its own different sound. Some whistle. Some chirp. Some peep, and some actually bark like a dog.

Salamanders Do Not Look Like Frogs or Toads They typically have slender bodies, short legs, and long tails. Most salamanders are about six inches long. The Chinese giant salamander can grow to be six feet in length. It’s the world’s largest amphibian!

Why Is a Salamander Called a Fire Lizard? Its name comes from the Greek word for “fire lizard.” Salamanders would come running out of logs they were hiding in when the logs were thrown on a fire.

The Best Place to Find Salamanders They live in or near water. Some live in water their entire lives and never lose their gills. Adult salamanders either breathe through their skin or with lungs. That’s right – some salamanders lack lungs! There are more species of salamanders in North, Central, and South America than the rest of the world combined.

Northern red salamander: With no lungs, the red salamander breathes through its skin.

A Very Unique Salamander Feature Salamanders can regrow lost limbs, including their toes and tails, within a few weeks. Frog and toad tadpoles can regrow limbs, but adult frogs and toads cannot.

by Melanie Freeman Short stubby legs kick and push the dirt. Clumps of dirt flip up. The animal lowers itself into the hole it has made. Soon its green and brown body is completely covered. Golden eyes are the only body parts that can be seen. But that soon changes. As the morning sun rises, the animal scoots itself deeper into the hole. That’s because the Eastern spadefoot toad, now completely buried, is a burrowing toad. Like other burrowing toads and frogs, a spadefoot toad spends most of its life under the ground. It comes out at night to eat, then returns to its comfortable home. During hot or dry times, spadefoot toads stay cool and moist in the burrow. During extremely dry times, they can stay buried for weeks or months. The Eastern spadefoot toad’s appearance is not common. Unlike the plain brown American toad, this spadefoot toad’s two-inch-long body is mostly brown with two yellow-green splotchy stripes. These stripes start behind each eye and curve down to the toad’s rear. Males have more colorful stripes. The rest of the body is marbled yellow-green and brown. The belly is white and pink. Eastern spadefoot toads can have a sprinkling of tiny raised orange spots across the top and sides of their bodies. This kaleidoscope of colors makes the toad quite unique. Other spadefoot toad species have different coloring.

Some spadefoot toads, like this Plains spadefoot, have orange spots.

The black and gold eyes of all spadefoot toads are also uncommon. The pupil is vertical, unlike the horizontal pupils of many other species of toad. Maybe the vertical pupils have something to do with the fact that this is a burrowing toad. Other burrowing species of toads and frogs also have vertical pupils.

Like all spadefoot toads, this Eastern spadefoot has golden eyes and vertical pupils.

You can clearly see a spade-shaped back foot on this Western spadefoot.

But why is it called a spadefoot toad? Break down the word “spadefoot” into two words. A spade is a shovel-like tool used for digging. Foot . . . well, you know what a foot is. So a spadefoot toad is a toad with “shovels” on its feet. Which feet? Just the back ones. On each back foot, this toad has a miniature “shovel.” It’s rather like a fingernail and is used to dig backwards! As the toad digs, it backs itself into the hole. Pretty clever! In this way, the toad can always keep an eye out for any predators. It wouldn’t want to have its face in the dirt while a snake is sneaking up behind it. Why do spadefoot toads bury themselves, anyway? They are avoiding the heat of the day. Think about how you would feel on a hot summer day. You want shade. You want something cool to drink. The toads are thinking the same thing. The layers of dirt below the surface are cooler. There is more moisture down there too. Like all toads, the spadefoot toad has a special ability to “drink” moisture through its skin. There are many different species of spadefoot toads. Their skin oozes a fluid that some people think smells like peanut butter! Definitely unique!