Outdoors

Wild Profile: Meet the bullfrog

By Karel Bock/Shutterstock

The heftiest of our North American frogs, bullfrogs are impressive all over: they can weigh almost two pounds and grow to eight inches. And that’s not counting their long legs, powerful enough to leap up to at least three feet—or, in one record-setting jump in California, 6.2 metres. (Which is only a few metres shy of the human world-record long jump.)

Big frogs have big appetites, and these carnivorous adults can swallow prey whole, sometimes in one mighty gulp. They’ll go for baby turtles and snakes, fish, small birds, ducklings, mice, and other frogs, including their own species. Animal cannibal alert!

Bullfrog populations—like plenty of amphibian populations—are too low in some parts of Canada. But in B.C., their numbers have exploded. That’s not good news: the frogs are an invasive species there.

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