Mountain Chorus Frog : "Rake Rake Rake Rake" Quiz

Answer: the Ohio River and Appalachia

Its range starts in western Maryland, southwest Pennsylvania and southeast Ohio, extends through eastern Kentucky and most of West Virginia, down to Tennessee, northern Alabama and northern Mississippi. The mountain chorus frog doesn't need deep forests, just a bit of woodland outside of town.

Answer: late February or March, depending on temperature

Male mountain chorus frogs start moving downhill as temperatures warm and begin their songs when they find a suitable place near water. If warm spells occur in January, they may begin for a few days, then stop, and restart when warm temperatures are sustained.

They are calling for females of course, and the sound may mean the coming of spring to us, but it has more important meanings to the frogs.

Answer: pools, ditches, large puddles are enough, even in high elevations

The frogs take "mountain" seriously in their name, and may live at an elevation of 3,500 feet (1,100 m), well above major river valleys. A good-size puddle, farm pond or roadside ditch will make a mountain chorus frog happy. They sing openly at the water's edge, not hiding themselves as some other members of their genus do.

Answer: very small, 1-1.5 in (25-38 mm), gray to greenish brown

The mountain chorus frog has a brown, gray or greenish body with a black or dark X or )( on its back. When I heard some singing around a puddle, I walked up and of course they all jumped in and swam to the bottom. I lay down with my face a few inches from the water, not moving, and in 15 minutes or so, the frogs started to come back out, one by one. Soon, there was a whole crowd, singing, listening, and doing embarrassing froggy things just inches from me. I'd definitely recommend it as a way to be part of their lives for a bit on a warm spring day.

Answer: a female can lay 500 eggs in many smaller groups, which spend a couple months as tadpoles

The female lays groups of 10 to 50 eggs at a time, working toward her total of 500. The eggs are attached to underwater vegetation, which may mean no more than blades of grass in a ditch, until they hatch almost two months later, as long as they escape predators and their water source doesn't dry up. The tadpoles are around 5/16" (8 mm) when they turn into frogs.

Answer: insects and similar things: beetles, ants, worms, spiders and flies

Unlike aquatic frogs, mountain chorus frogs aren't always near water, so they need to eat what's available: ants, centipedes, earthworms, spiders, leaf hoppers, flies, butterfly and moth larvae. One can sum up their favorite food by saying animals on the ground or on low vegetation, that neither fly nor swim.

Answer: move upland to live in dry woods until next season

A scientist who investigated discovered that the male frogs visited different pools to sing and find mates, going 2,000 feet (610 meters) to find the best mate within one season, or twice that distance between years. After mating season, the frogs move uphill away from water and find a suitable place in the woods to spend the next eight or nine months. They are rarely seen, because they no longer sing and their natural coloration is an excellent camouflage amid fallen leaves and low undergrowth.

Answer: birds, snakes, raccoons, larger frogs

When mountain chorus frogs are singing and mating, they're vulnerable to raccoons, skunks, snakes, turtles, larger frogs, and any creature that is prepared to pounce on frogs that can retreat into shallow water. Otherwise, they can be picked up by the same animals, as well blue jays, owls, rat snakes, and any carnivorous animal looking for a small snack.

Answer: false locust / short sound of a phone

The genus name applies to many little singing frogs, including the spring peeper, and needs to cover them all. It means false (pseud) locust (akris, Greek for locust), implying it's not really a locust, but sounds like one. The species name, just for this frog, brachyphona, doesn't have anything to do with the Latin word brachium for arm. And I thought I had it figured out! Instead, it's using "brachy," Greek for "short." "Phona" is translated as a phone sound or as the same kind of sound made by a voice -- a short sound of a phone ringing.

The name was given in 1889 by Edward Drinker Cope, the same Cope who was part of the "bone wars" over western fossils with Othniel Charles Marsh. At that early date, it's just barely possible that Cope actually heard the sound of one of the first phones ringing, thought the frog sounded similar, and named it accordingly.

Answer: hibernate underground in the woods

Aquatic frogs hibernate on the mud at the bottom of ponds, but terrestrial frogs like the mountain chorus frog hibernate where they spend the fall, far from water in the leaf litter of woods. They don't need to be good diggers, because they can find crevices or natural cracks in logs, roots, or rocks. Where the leaf litter is deep, they can dig to the bottom of it and barely into the soil surface to find protection from hard freezing. Frogs can hibernate so well that they look dead, but the glucose in their blood protects their vital organs, and as weather warms, they come out of their hibernation and head down toward water again.