These five Puffkin frogs have gathered for a sing-along. Ribbit...ribbit...ribbit... They are all made by Swibco and are all Puffkins. They are from left: Winky, Candy, Freddy, and Rufus with Lily up front.
Frogs are amphibians. They are cold-blooded, which means that their body temperature is almost the same as the temperature of their surroundings. Frogs spend most of their lives developing in water and breathing through gills. They like to live near water and have moist skin. After mating, frogs return to water to lay their eggs, which then develop into tadpoles.
Swibco produced some really terrific frog characters while they were making Puffkins. The first frog introduced was Lily, who seems to be a green tree frog. The next frog introduced was Freddy the red-eyed tree frog. Then came Winky, who is apparently one of the very beautiful poison-dart frogs of Central America, possibly Dendrobates tinctorius. Then Rufus came along who also appears to be a poison-dart frog, possibly Dendrobates pumilio or the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog.
Despite their popular name, only 55 of 135 recognized species of poison-dart frogs are known to be toxic, and of those only three are used by hunters to tip their darts. Ranging from a half inch to three inches long, toxic species show brilliant neon colors that warn predators to keep away.
Across Central and northern South America, each species of poison-dart frog exudes its own collection of chemicals. Frogs caught in the wild gradually become less poisonous, and the offspring of those captive frogs are nontoxic. The change may be the result of its diet. The frog's natural food--mostly insects--cannot be duplicated in a terrarium.
The nurturing behavior of these frogs (especially D. pumilio) is very interesting. The female lays her 2 to 16 eggs hidden in leaves on the floor of the forest. When they hatch, she then carries them one at a time (on her back) to the forest canopy and deposits each one in a separate pool of water that is found in certain plants. Then, every few days, she returns to the little pools and deposits unfertilized eggs into the pool for her little hatchlings to feed on.
The Red-Eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas) lives in tropical rain forests in Central America and is less than 3 inches long. The damp air keeps its skin moist.
It minimizes water loss by resting underneath leaves and tucking its limbs up close to its body. It eats many kinds of insects including katydids and butterflies.
It has red eyes and orange toes. It also has blue sides that run down its legs. The colors help it blend into its surroundings.
Breeding takes place from October to March, usually near temporary or permanent ponds. The frogs breed while in an embrace called amplexus, the male mounted and locked onto the back of the female. The male then fertilizes the 30-50 pale eggs as the female lays them on a leaf over standing water.
In five days, the tadpoles wiggle their way down the leaf to the water below. It then takes the tadpoles 75-80 days to metamorphose into a frog. The adult frog will spend most of the rest of its life in the forest canopy, often hidden among bromeliads.
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