[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
5-Legged Frog in Missouri
5-Legged Frog Crops Up In
Missouri Pond
Sunday, October 20, 1996
By Tom Uhlenbrock
Of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Staff
Brian Dampier was hunting frogs at a pond near
his school in Columbia when he made a catch
that thrust Missouri into the midst of a disturbing
wildlife phenomenon.
"I grabbed really fast and got a handful of mud
and a frog," said the seventh-grader. "When I
cleaned the mud off, I saw the frog had five legs.
I thought, `Whoa, what's wrong here?' "
Brian took his catch to Mike Bielski, the science
teacher at Gentry Middle School. Bielski had
heard that similarly deformed frogs were being
found elsewhere and that pesticides or other
sources of environmental pollution were
suspected as the potential cause.
Bielski called state herpetologist Tom Johnson,
who visited Columbia Wednesday to inspect
what Dampier had found, and Missouri officially
joined the ranks of states, most of them in the
Midwest, where ponds were producing frogs
with deformities.
Although they haven't determined what's causing
the deformities, researchers say concern should
be great. Amphibians - because their skin is
permeable and permits toxins to invade - can be
the first detectors of problems in a biological
system.
"Amphibians are very good indicators of the
health of the environment," Johnson said. "This is
not a quirk. It's something we need to look at
seriously."
The first report of deformed frogs came last
year, as Cindy Reinitz led a nature-studies class
on a field trip in the heart of Minnesota's farm
country. The class walked by a pond, and the
boys began to catch frogs.
Some of the frogs had missing hind legs, others
had too many legs or no legs at all. Others had a
single eye.
The closer the class got to the pond, "the more
grotesque the deformities were, probably
because those frogs were unable to move away
from the water," Reinitz said. "One girl pulled out
a notebook and said, `We need to record data.'
"
The class was on its way to study a woodland.
But the students' initial disgust at the misshapen
frogs soon turned to fascination, and the
Minnesota New Country School Frog Project
was born.
Biologists long have reported that populations of
certain species of amphibians are dwindling, but
the field trip last year was the first documentation
of a pondful of misshapen frogs.
The school project set up a hot line and a page
on the Internet, seeking other reports of
deformed frogs.
So far, deformed frogs have been found at 174
sites in Minnesota - and in the states of
Wisconsin, Vermont, South Dakota, Ohio,
Alabama and Michigan and the province of
Quebec. Iowa is looking into scattered reports;
Illinois has a single report of a frog with multiple
legs.
Missouri had no confirmed reports until last
week.
What's Happening?
The deformities are found in several frog
species, including the northern leopard frog,
which is common to most of the Midwest. Brian
Dampier's catch was an immature green frog.
Cricket frogs found in the pond appeared
healthy.
A recent conference in Duluth, Minn., brought
the country's biologists together to discuss
theories on what's happening with the frogs.
Many causes are blamed for the disappearance
of amphibian species. The most prominent are
the destruction of wetlands and other habitats
and the introduction of new predators, such as
bullfrogs in the West and trout in mountain lakes.
Also suspected are atmospheric changes, such
as acid rain, the depletion of the Earth's upper
ozone layer and the infiltration of more harmful
ultraviolet rays from the sun.
But those culprits are thought to cause death, not
deformity.
Biologists at the conference offered a variety of
possibilities for the deformities, ranging from
parasites to pesticides to heavy metals. The
Environmental Protection Agency is planning its
own study.
Earlier studies on animals, Johnson noted, have
found that some pesticides and other chemicals
interfere with the development of an embryo,
causing deformities and sexual dysfunction in the
fetus. What happens in animals could happen in
humans, he said.
Frogs As Barometers
The Minnesota Legislature allocated $123,000
for a study of the frogs by the state Pollution
Control Agency and the University of
Minnesota.
"So far, they haven't found anything that jumps
out," said Ralph Pribble of the agency. "No
definitive trends."
The research has looked at pesticides and
herbicides used in the area, as well as soil and
water chemistry and history of land use.
Pribble said the research had drawn interest
from all over the world, where frogs may not be
deformed, but are disappearing, along with other
amphibian species.
"There's been a lot of research on the population
declines, but nobody had seen deformities on
this scale until last year," he said. "They think of
this as a new wrinkle in the ongoing stress that
frogs have been under worldwide.
"Our staff is saying it ultimately may wind up
being a piece of that puzzle."
Val Beasley, a professor at the University of
Illinois who attended the Duluth conference, said
publicity over the plight of the frogs could bring
attention to a general over-taxing of the Earth's
resources.
"Every place there's a wet spot, we're putting in
a tile and draining it," Beasley said. "It's immoral
to push the land that hard. It's not part of
sustainable agriculture."
Reinitz, the Minnesota school teacher, made a
similar argument.
She referred to a children's book, "Kermit's
Guide to Life in the '90s." In the final pages,
Kermit explains that frogs in today's environment
are like the canaries used to warn gold miners
when the air was bad. When the canary died, it
was time to get out.
"You know," Kermit says, "frogs turn out to be
the barometers of the Earth. When we go, so
does the neighborhood."
Pictures at http://www.mncs.k12.mn.us/frog/picts.html