why are they doing the thing? i’m guessing trying to impress a mate with their legs
I don’t know what species this is, but googling ‘frog leg extension behavior’ found this paper:
Visual display in Blanchard’s cricket frogs (Acris blanchardi)
Abstract: Most reports of anuran visual displays (especially those involving extension of the back legs) are of tropical species living within noisy habitats. Here, we provide a descriptive report of visual displays involving back leg extension in a temperate anuran, Blanchard’s cricket frog (Acris blanchardi). We observed male cricket frogs engaging in bouts of display, lasting an average of 2.9 min and incorporating both visual and acoustic signals. In a typical display bout, frogs near each other began circling (during a chorus at the pond) within a small area while extending their back legs and occasionally vocalizing. Rarely, the frogs would attack one another by hopping onto, then off, an opponent. Bouts ended when individuals stopped displaying while remaining near each other. The most common behaviors observed during a display bout, in order of decreasing frequency, were leg extensions, direction changes, forward movements, and vocalizations. These observations increase prospects for the study of evolution of visual displays in anurans occupying relatively open, quiet habitats.
This one sounds like it’s an intra-male competition behavior, but I can’t tell if that’s for territory defense or mate aquisition. It probably depends more on the specific species represented, and could likely be either – although I’d guess more male competition because size/length of limbs is a ‘I’m bigger than you’ thing, and mate displays tend to more often represent fitness or reproductive quality.
We just talked about flagging/leg waving in Herpetology on Thursday. Frogs that do this apparently use it instead of calling due to competing sounds from their habitat, like flowing water.
Rio Grande Chirping Frog (Eleutherodactylus
cystignathoides campi), Houston, TX
While I was cleaning the water tray for one of the bird cages at the nature center, I found this little female Chirping Frog hiding underneath. She was only 2.3 cm, and the males are even smaller.
This tiny non-native frog was introduced
into the Houston area, and along the Gulf Coast of Texas, from the Rio Grande Valley of Southern Texas.
They lay their eggs in moist soil and under logs (instead of in standing
water), and its presumed they were brought up here unintentionally in
potted plants.
Some of you may
have encountered them hopping out from under pots, stones, or wood in
your gardens. More commonly, you may have heard their short chirp like
squeaks on warm nights in residential neighborhoods (which sound to me like the rubber soles of shoes on the basketball court).
This week I am working with a Malagasy friend/colleague from the Technical University of Braunschweig to describe a couple dozen new species of stump-toed frogs (Stumpffia) from Madagascar.
PiraticOctopus 