The Leaf Frogs

The Leaf Frogs are probably our favorite frog group; it is so hard to come up with a favorite.  We have kept and bred Red-Eyed Leaf Frogs (Agalychnis callidryas) for about 5 years now and they still amaze us every time they start to move around from their normal, bump on a leaf state.  Few animals can rival the collection of colours distributed throughout this beautiful frog.  Although all of the leaf frogs are nocturnal, which makes them difficult to observe, they all have a character about them which makes them very welcome additions to our group.  We have many different leaf frogs and their relatives, not all are pictured here yet, but most will be soon. 

Red-Eyes are wonderful frogs, they are vividly coloured (giving them an almost unreal look) and fairly easy to keep if you get healthy individuals.  The biggest problem is that these frogs, like all of the other leaf frogs, come in very weak and susceptible to almost anything that they happened to pick up on their travels. They often come in with a very high parasite load.  Often you will get what are called "farmed frogs"  this is NOT the same thing as captive bred.  Farmed Red-Eyes are not much different than wild-caught, they have been confined to an area in the jungle where they occur naturally and fenced in.  This effectively confines the progeny so that they can be easily caught.  We have found that these frogs arrive in worse condition than the true wild caught.  You can generally tell which you are getting by their size:  if all of the frogs are the same size, then they are probably  farmed, if you can positively make out males and females (the females are much larger than the males)  then likely they are wild caught. Until you get better at sexing leaf frogs this can be hard to do, it can be difficult to separate out groups of males from groups of juveniles.  The ideal situation is to get captive bred individuals, and these are becoming widely available in North America, but if you cannot, it is best to treat your frogs as soon as you get them for the multitude of parasites and bacteria that they are probably carrying around with them. Contact a vet which is familiar with Herp. care.

Once acclimated, Red-Eyes look great in a well planted aquarium, their only drawback, and this is true of all of the leaf frogs, is that they are fully nocturnal, which makes them very difficult to see.  During the day they look like green gobs of gum stuck to the plants and aquarium walls.  

Observe the Leaf Frog Life Cycle with pictures of our own Red Eyed Tree Frogs Breeding and close up pictures of the development of the eggs and tadpoles.

In general, leaf frogs require a well planted aquarium with it's size in height rather than length.  The smaller frogs do not need all that much space but we really believe that overcrowding causes stress levels to rise and this can lead to the death of your animals.  The starting size in our opinion should be a 15-20 gal. aquarium for a max of about 6 frogs.  These frogs are delicate animals, they require clean water and careful attention must be given to their temperature and humidity requirements.  Red Eyes and the Tiger Leg (Phyllomedusa tomopterna) require higher humidity than many of the other common leaf frogs, the other Tiger Leg (Phyllomedusa hypochondralis), can also be called Jaguar frogs, tend to come from savanna-like areas, and thus require lower humidity and higher temperatures.  The true Monkey frogs, Phyllomedusa bicolor and P. sauvagii require very high temperatures, which should range into the high 80's low 90's in a basking area.   Temperature is very important for all reptiles and amphibians,  these animals do not produce their own heat the way we as mammals do,  instead they rely on their surroundings to provide the heat necessary for their bodies to work properly.  Failing to provide enough heat or providing too much heat means that these animals cannot digest properly, their bodies don't function properly and this all translates into stress.  The monkey frogs also come from very arid areas, and thus should not be excessively misted down, and their relative humidity should be kept low.

Next to the Red Eyes, another really cute Leaf Frog is the Tiger Legged Leaf Frog, there are actually two different species known commonly as Tiger Legs, they are Phyllomedusa tomopterna and P. hypochondralis, we have both of them but I only have a photograph up of one: P. tomopterna.

This is one of our little male P. tomopternas, these frogs are smaller than the Red Eyes, and a lot thinner.  P. hypochondralis are smaller still hitting a max of about 5cm in length, whereas a  large female P. tomopterna will be around 7 cm.  The two species are easy to tell apart: the stripes on P. tomopterna are generally more distinct and alternate down the sides and legs of the frog, for P. hypochondralis, the stripes are distinct on the legs but tend to turn into a dust like pattern on the sides of the frog.  This distinction will be easier to see once I have a picture of P. hypochondralis up.  Another feature to look at in separating the two is in the presence of a calcar on the heel of P. tomopterna.  A calcar is a flap of skin which extends out from the leg at the point of where the heel would be. 

Phyllomedusa vaillanti is also a leaf frog, it is sometimes named the Razor-Back Leaf Frog because of the fairly sharp lateral folds down each side.  Like most of the leaf frogs, it's sides are distinctly pattered, only not with stripes; these guys have orange circles, surrounded by and connected to each other by a beep burgundy background.  They are quite cute and are similar in size to the Red Eyes.    

The Chacoan Waxy Monkey Frog, P. sauvagii is a beautiful frog, this species, along with the Giant Monkey frog (P. bicolor), are the major members of the what we call the Waxy Monkey Frogs.  These frogs hop very little, they dominantly walk through the forest in a hand over hand motion.  They are called monkey frogs because they have an opposable thumb which gives them the ability to grasp things easily.

These frogs are native to very arid conditions,  generally amphibians loose water through their skin very quickly and would dehydrate and die  under dry conditions.  But many frogs have developed ways of dealing with these difficult conditions.  The Waxy Monkey Frogs secrete a wax out through their skin and then rub this over their bodies with their feet.  This has the effect of making the skin waterproof, by doing this they reduce the amount of water that they loose to the atmosphere through their skin and are able to maintain themselves under dry conditions. 

Above is a picture of one of our female P. sauvagii's, we also have P. bicolor's but I do not have a good picture of them yet.  These two species are really nice frogs to keep: they are very large, P. bicolor is one of the largest tree frogs; because of their dry skin, the walls of the aquarium stay quite clean for a long time which is rare with most tree-frogs; and they feel very different, their dry waxy skin makes them feel like no other frog, they don't feel slimy at all.

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