Why Tadpoles?

To understand how the brains of humans and other animals control their behaviour, we need to understand their whole nervous system. This is a daunting task, especially in humans where the brain is so complex with billions of nerve cells or neurons.

Even the nervous systems of animals like worms and flies have several thousands of neurons, each making many complex connections. What we need is to study a simple animal with simple behaviour like a young tadpole.

  • Very young tadpoles (Rana temporaria) developing in eggs - by Lia Gilmour

Our Aim

We are scientists who study very young tadpoles to try to understand how the brain works. Throughout this website we will tell you all about tadpoles and how we study them.

Our studies are supported by multiple funding bodies, including the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Wellcome Trust, and the Royal Society. Part of the funding is to explain what we do and why we do it to as broad an audience as possible. This has made it possible to build and develop our tadpole website.

The website is divided into 6 sections:

Kids

Games

Schools

Science

Media

About Us

Please use our contact form to send us any questions or comments!

The Digestive System

 

The digestive system is modified to account for the change of the herbivorous diet of the tadpole to the carnivorous diet of the frog.

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The Skin

 

The skin adapts for the change from a purely aquatic lifestyle to an amphibious lifestyle.

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The Reproductive System

 

The urogenital system develops to allow for reproduction in adulthood.

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The Skeleton

 

The skeletal structure develops to accommodate the change from tail swimming to using legs to move around. The skull also needs to be remodelled for a frog's change in vision.

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The Nervous System

 

A tadpole sees from eyes that are positioned on opposite sides of the head. During metamorphosis, the optical nerves develop to accommodate a frog's binocular vision, where the eyes are positioned at the front of the head.

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1. Mating and Laying Spawn

 

Male and female frogs go to ponds in the winter. They mate in the spring, and the female lays big clumps of eggs.

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2. Frog Spawn

 

Frogs eggs are called frogspawn. Each round black egg is about 1 mm wide and is surrounded by a blob of jelly. Other animals produce spawn as well, which you can look at here.

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3. Maturing Frog Spawn

 

After a few days, the eggs begin to grow into tiny tadpoles inside the jelly.

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4. Hatchlings

 

Then the tadpoles hatch! They are about 5 mm long and they can’t swim (yet). They can bend their body from side to side using special muscles along their trunks and tails.

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5. Young Tadpoles

 

When their tail is big enough, they swim off into the pond to start to feed. At first they have gills (the pale protrusions from the head region in the left photo) so they can breath underwater like fish. Young tadpoles feed by grazing the surface of pond weeds and also eating tiny floating plants called algae.

Click here to play a tadpole feeding game called Taddypole!

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6. Maturing Tadpoles

 

Later they develop lungs and can swim up to the surface of the water to breath. The gills are absorbed back into their bodies and eyes develop. Older tadpoles are then able to feed on small animals like young insects.

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7. Mature Tadpoles

The next stage in development is to grow back legs. Tadpoles during this stage need to eat meat in order to get the proper nutrients to grow.

If you are looking after tadpoles, be careful as they can eat each other if you don't give them meat to eat! Click here to learn more about how to look after tadpoles as pets.

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8. Froglet

Finally, tadpoles grow front legs and their tail shrinks until it almost disappears. This is when they climb out of the pond and start living on dry land. Small frogs are commonly called froglets.

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9. Adult Frog

The little froglets will stay by the pond and slowly grow over the summer, eating small insects and worms. They will hibernate just like other adult frogs in damp spots near ponds from autumn until the next spring.

After four years, the new frogs will become adults and will be ready to mate and begin the cycle again.

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Trial content.

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Copy - 9. Adult Frog

The little froglets will stay by the pond and slowly grow over the summer, eating small insects and worms. They will hibernate just like other adult frogs in damp spots near ponds from autumn until the next spring.

After four years, the new frogs will become adults and will be ready to mate and begin the cycle again.

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Desert Habitats

Desert habitats are the driest habitats in the world. Most people only think of very hot habitats as being deserts, but cold habitats can be deserts as well! Animals and plants that live in deserts have the ability to survive on very little water and animals can control their body temperatures so they stay at the right level.

 Some examples of plants and animals that live in deserts are cacti, the desert tortoise and the artic fox.

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Coral Reef Habitats

Coral reefs are found in warm tropical oceans all around the world. Coral reefs can be found in both shallow and deep water and take hundreds of thousands of years to grow! They provide food and shelter to many fish and other animals, making them habitats that are home to so many different types of life.

Some examples of plants and animals that live in coral reefs are the sea star, sea grass, the octopus and clown fish.

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Rainforest Habitats

Unlike deserts, rainforests are very damp habitats that are filled with lush plant and animal life. Rainforests have an average rainfall of 2,000 to 10,000 millimetres a year! That can be 10 times more rain that falls in the UK! Animals and plants that live in rainforests are used to the wet and humid environment and are able to compete with all the different animals and plants around them.

Some examples of plants and animals that live in rainforests are orchids, the poison dart frog and the hummingbird.

 

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Pollution of Habitats

Pollution is the contamination of habitats with harmful substances. These harmful substances can be anything from plastics, to fertilisers used in fields, to waste products from manufacturing factories.

As humans continue to reproduce and the global population grows, we continue to produce a larger and larger amount of waste and pollution. This affects all air, land and water-based habitats and threatens the health and survival of the plants and animals that live in them, including humans!

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Land Use

As the human population gets larger, we require more land to live on. More houses and schools and everything else we need to live must be built and more resources need to be found. As we expand our towns and cities, this takes away space and resources from other animals and plants.

In order to build more buildings for humans, land must be cleared, which greatly reduces its biodiversity. This means that the range of animals and plants in the land gets smaller, which can harm the food chains in the habitat.

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Deforestation

Deforestation is an example of harmful land use by humans. Trees are an important part of the carbon cycle and they help to clean the air and produce oxygen. With a growing human population, we have started clearing larger and larger areas of trees and forests to build on the land or to obtain wood.

This reduces the biodiversity the the habitats and sometimes destroys habitats completely.

 

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