About a month and a half ago, my lady and I were camping on the outskirts of town, and decided to go field herping and caught several Gray Tree Frogs. We decided keep the smallest one. We brought him home and set him up in a nice woodland terrarium with arboreal perches and vining plants.
He was about a little more than half an inch then, and has fed voraciously on a diet consisting mostly Woodlice, some crickets and an occasional spider. On this diet he has since doubled in size!! I know he is male partly because of his darkened and loose throat skin. Exactly how large do male Gray Tree Frogs grow?
Anyway, to get to the point, he has started to exhibit some strange new behavior patterns. For the last couple of days, I have found him hiding behind and under sections of bark. At first I thought he may be ill, as it is usually not a good sign to see arboreal animals on the ground. Yet he is still highly active, robust and eats like a pig.
That's when I noticed what it was he was doing. Like I said, a large part of his diet consists of Woodlice, a food that Tree Frogs probably don't come across often in the wild, due to their tree dwelling natures. But it seems now that he has learned to sit under and behind sections of bark, where he watches for woodlice to scamper across so he can devour them!
I was impressed with his ingenuity and adaptability, as well as his intelligence. has anybody else ever witnessed seemingly intelligent and adaptive behavior in their captive tree frogs?
That's really interesting. What a great little guy!
Male: 30-40 mm (1.2-1.6 inches); Female: 40-60 mm (1.6-2.4 inches)
He sounds like a very smart little guy!! He must be alot of fun to watch.
Actually these frogs are known to forage on the ground on occasion so not so strange to find him doing that!
Founder of Frogforum.net (2008) and Caudata.org (2001)
My female Gray Tree Frog does the same! she has learned that the crickets will go to the darkest part of the cage, inside her log, so as soon as she realizes I put crickets in, she'll go over to her log and wait for them to come to her! Thats how she got the nickname 'fatty' since she doesn't actually hunt sometimes, she just hides in her log and waits for food to come to her.
I have my suspicions that H. chrysoscelis may be more terrestrial than H. versicolor (Although I need some versicolor to compare...) All the specimens i find at my place of work have to cross a 300 yard wide lawn to get to the walls of the building.
My captives too, seem to like to hunt on the ground, just as much as "in the air".
Watching FrogTV because it is better when someone else has to maintain the enclosure!
Back when I had Green Tree Frogs, they would always sit on a vertical branch and peer down at the ground.
I'm not sure which species of Gray I have, as we have both in Minnesota, but I did find this one and several of the others in the grass on the side of a trail next to a small pond surrounded by a young small forest and fields of prairie land. He also lacks dark black outlines on his grey bands, so I suspect that he may be Hyla chrysoscelis.
They sure are neat and interesting little frogs, and they seem very popular on this board.
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