Thursday 15 June 2023

Released Into the Wild

Every day at the moment I gather up from the indoor tanks a number of tadpoles that have turned into froglets, acquiring their front legs and gradually losing their tails, and transfer them to the pond outside. The greatest risk for froglets developing indoors is that they drown, unable to find their way to a rock or bit of weed poking above the surface of the water: this happened to at least one in the tank, whereupon its siblings ate it, an especially unpleasant thing to witness even though I only caught its later stages. So I'm keen gradually to get them to where they should be. 

However I do wonder whether I'm simply delivering nice packets of frog-shaped protein to the fish. I think the froglets are by the time they develop a bit big for the fish to tackle but who knows. I was going to close the tanks down and transfer all the remaining tadpoles out today, because apparently not all of them will ever metamorphose, and will remain as tadpoles; but now I think I may just leave them a little while yet. There are far fewer of them now so the remaining ones shouldn't be too stressed.

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