Common Garlic: description, taxonomy, habitat, photo, content

In this article, we want to talk about a possible home pet. Meet, this is a common scabbard. Recently, absolutely exotic pets have become fashionable, pushing to the background traditional cats and dogs.

Who is such a scabbard?

The common cuckoo (pelobates fuscus) is a frog, a representative of a whole family of scabbards. By the way, this is a small amphibian creature, up to eight centimeters long. Typically, the frog has a light gray color or yellowish-brown color.

But her interesting name is ordinary garlic, because her skin sometimes emits a garlic smell. Amphibian glands secrete mucus with such an unpleasant odor in case of danger.

Common Garlic: description

If you look at the scabbard, then outwardly it looks like the most common toad, but only her skin is very smooth. The frog's body is stocky, with a large head, but the hind legs are short enough. Her eyes are large and convex, and there are teeth. A light strip stretches along the back.

Common Garlic: habitat

Garlic is an unusual creature. It is found in places where soft soil is present. And this is due to the fact that she is very fond of digging in the ground. That is why such frogs often meet in the fields, but only in the damp and at night. They burrow into the soil with the help of hind legs, which are armed with a shovel-like tubercle. More time frog holds exactly under the ground at a depth of fifteen centimeters. And they dig the ground of the scabbard with amazing rapidity and quickly go vertically down. In the daytime they sit in mink, and at night they go out in search of food, but they can hunt only when the air is wet enough, if it is dry, they will not even leave their shelter, no matter how much they want to eat. Adult individuals winter from September to April in mink rodents, swallows, moles, in pits under stumps.

Common Garlic common in broad-leaved and mixed forests, meadows, vegetable gardens, marshes and lakes.

Frogs can only be met with the onset of dusk, at night or in the morning, and then only when the air humidity is sufficient for it. It is for this reason that the garlic is considered a rare species.

Reproduction of the scabbard

In frogs the frog dwells only during breeding, it's about twenty-five days. The process of spawning occurs in the water. The female is able to postpone up to 1800 eggs. It should be noted that among all the representatives of amphibians in the garlick, perhaps the longest period of hibernation, which is two hundred days.

The frog spends the entire mating season near the pond. The more damp and rainy the summer, the longer the breeding season will last. Females lay their clutches, like threads, directly on plants in water bodies.

Next tadpoles develop about a hundred days. Very small tadpoles have an orange color, later they become golden and brownish. To feed, they take a vertical position and collect the desired water from the water surface. Their diet is vegetable food. In shallow water, they prefer not to swim. Tadpoles are fairly large, they can hardly fit in the palm of your hand.

As soon as they have front limbs, they instantly leave the pond and go to dry land, burrow into the ground and await the moment when their tail disappears. The very process of development of tadpoles can last from three to five months. The sexual maturation of amphibians occurs at the age of three.

Amphibian food

Common garlic only leads a nocturnal life and at the same time it feels great on land. In the summer, she can make whole trips, leaving the water for six hundred meters. During the day, amphibians rest, and at night they go hunting. They are traded with insects, worms, snails.

After a night feeding, the common scabbard (pictured in the article) digs its fossa with its hind legs and submerges itself in the ground, closing its eyes and nostrils. In order to completely dig in, it is only a few minutes.

Self-defense of frogs

To protect against enemies, the frog uses a garlic smell. He stands out at the slightest danger and is able to repel the desire to attack. If in time the scabbard has not managed to escape, she starts to croak loudly, swells and rises on the feet. In this simple way, she tries to increase her size and thereby frighten the enemy. Both females and males are able to croak, however they do not have resonators, and therefore they can only be heard by the water. In the wild, the amphibian lives five to six years. And at home at normal care these frogs can live up to eleven years.

The poison of the skin glands of the frog is not dangerous, it can harm only a small number of individuals. For a man, he does not pose a danger, and therefore a frog can be safely taken in hand. Often the scabbard itself becomes food for snakes, vipers, herons, stork, large curlew, cob, drink, black kite, black grouse, owl, eagle owl, owl, badger, raven, hedgehog, polecat, fox, mink. As you can see, the enemies of such a small creature have more than enough.

Garlic at home

In principle, as a domestic pet can act and garlic common. Its content in captivity should occur in a special terrarium of at least thirty liters. It must necessarily be a reservoir, the water in which it should be changed daily. At the bottom of the reservoir you need to pour a layer of soil five to eight centimeters thick, consisting of peat, bark and sand. There must also be green plants in the terrarium.

For adults, you do not need to warm up the air in addition, it will be enough twenty degrees, but you must keep the humidity, it should be at least 75 percent, and better if its value is close to 90 percent. Garlic is a nocturnal creature, and therefore one can not make lighting in the terrarium.

Young frog tadpoles should be fed with vegetable feed. Adult individuals need ants, beetles, spiders, insect larvae, all of which make up over eighty percent of their food. Also scabbards like to eat earthworms and slugs. You need to buy a frog in pet stores.

Difficulties in keeping amphibians

If you decide to keep a frog at home, you need to evaluate all the difficulties associated with it at once. Is it so easy to care for the ordinary scabbard? Systematics for controlling humidity, and for young individuals also for temperature, should become an indispensable condition for keeping the frog.

In addition, it should be remembered that the terrarium needs to be cleaned very often and water is changed daily. Live food is also difficult to get, and it is not convenient to plant houses at home, and this is not practical, because it can spread throughout the apartment. Frogs are able to escape from the terrarium and just die in the apartment from dehydration, and therefore you need to keep it closed. Remember that the scabbard is a nocturnal creature, so you should not expect that you will be able to observe it during the day. This is not the pet that will entertain you, rather you will need close attention and proper care.

Most likely, most of the time the frog will spend, buried in the sand or substrate, and go out only for food. To maintain normal humidity, the terrarium needs to be sprayed with water inside. And for a refuge of an amphibian, you can put pieces of wood bark inside.

Rare view

It should be noted that the habitat of the scabbard is wide enough. She lives in Central and Eastern Europe, Western Asia. And, nevertheless, the amphibian is one of the rare species. It, for example, is listed in the Red Book of Estonia, as well as the Red Book of the Moscow, Orel and Lipetsk regions. At present, there is no threat of its disappearance. It is rather protected as a rare little-known amphibian. Such an unusual creature is a common scabbard. The Red Book of the Moscow Region in the second edition already included a frog in its lists because of the fact that, compared with the last century, there are fewer places where it lives, and the number of individuals also suffered. It is assumed that this is due to the long period of development of its offspring, as well as significant pollution of the environment, which also significantly affects the garlick.

It should be noted that many species of reptiles and amphibians are included in the Red Book of the Moscow Region, which is explained by the fact that these animals suffer the most from their anthropogenic influence due to their characteristics. Amphibians are very attached to the habitat, unlike other animals, they can not migrate to long distances, besides, they are directly connected to their water body. Currently, the decline in the number of amphibians is observed around the world. Why this happens is unknown, no explanation has been found for this phenomenon.