Tadpole graduation

What can you say? For a whole week we knew them as our adorable tadpole friends and then one day, you look in on them and front legs have been added to back legs and the first forays onto dry land have been made. Before we know it, they will be dropping out of college, moving back to the terrarium, and mooching flightless fruit flies off of us.

On a more serious note, it has been really interesting watching these little guys transform from tadpoles to frogs-- going from herbivores to carnivores and breathing underwater and out of it. Call me sadistic, but I actually enjoy watching them sit stone-like, "hunting" their fruit fly prey before they spring into action and wolf them down in a single bite. They often will obviously be pretending to not look at the fly before the attack. It's the classic no-look scarf. This is pretty slick behaviour coming from an animal that, just last week, knew no greater challenge than grazing on boiled lettuce as it floated by. The behavioural metamorphosis is at least as fascinating as the physical.