With 14 members present this month, our meeting started with the sad news of the passing of Janet Hampson, earlier in the week and I displayed a slide I prepared paying tribute to her.

The meeting got down to learning about frogs. Around 370 million years ago amphibians started to leave the water and become ground based. Around the world they are under threat from, building climate change, forest fires, deforestation, pollution, and unreliable water supply. Frogs are particularly sensitive as they have four stages in their development, from frog spawn to tadpoles to froglets and finally to frogs. As tadpoles they start by being vegetarians eating plants and living underwater. Then they grow back legs and develop external gills as they change to insect eating amphibians. These external gills are gradually absorbed into their bodies as they become air breathing. With all these metaphases, in their development it can be seen how changes to the environment can seriously affect them. We watched a simple video detailing the development of frogs.

We learnt the differences between frog and toads with toads being part of the frog family and we heard there were some 8000 members of the species around the world but some 20-40 species have become extinct over the past 30 years.

The second half to the talk was about different frogs and toads from around the world. We saw big Purple Frogs with small, pointed heads that help them burrow up to five feet underground. We saw very frog but dangerous frogs from Costa Rica and venomous frogs in the Amazon.

Finally, we had a smile on everybody's face as we played the Frog Chorus to finish the meeting.
Trevor