Cricket frogs
at
a Glance
Key Features:
Cricket frogs are tiny brown frogs who live in wetlands. You can identify a cricket frog by the small size and dark triangle between the eyes. Some cricket frogs have green or rusty brown stripes up the back that outline the dark triangle on the head.
Conservation Status: Least - Concern Population Stable
Habitat:
Sunny edges of slow-moving marshes, marshy ponds, and streams.
Breeding habits:
Cricket frogs breed in the spring and summer and lay up to 150 eggs per clutch. The eggs, which are attached to plants on the surface of the water, hatch in a few days.
Seasons cricket frogs are active in our area:
All year when winters are mild.
Diet:
Adults eat arthropods, crickets, and mosquitoes. Tadpoles eat phytoplankton.
hunting Behavior:
Cricket frogs are active during the day most of the year. They become nocturnal when daytime temperatures reach the mid-80s. They hunt prey by sitting quietly and ambushing prey that ventures too close. Southern cricket frogs will sometimes chase prey.
commonly confused with:
Other frogs and toads, especially chorus frogs and spring peepers.
Blanchard’s cricket frog
Northern cricket frog
ABOUT CRICKET FROGS
Cricket frogs are some of the smallest vertebrates in North Louisiana. The only frogs that are smaller are the Rio Grande chirping frogs. The taxonomists who named these tiny, non-climbing, super hopping tree frogs that eat crickets and chirp like crickets nailed it. Cricket frogs, indeed.
Cricket frogs are members of the treefrog Hylidae family but are not arboreal. You’ll find these tiny amphibians at ground level. Their closest relatives are chorus frogs, which they’re often mistaken for.
Cricket frogs are tiny, semiaquatic frogs that live in and near lakes, ponds, and wetlands. Two subspecies of cricket frogs roam eastern North America: northern cricket frogs and southern cricket frogs. These tiny frogs live in northeastern Mexico, throughout the central and eastern U.S., and southeastern Canada.
Northern frogs, or Acris crepitans, and southern cricket frogs, or Acris gryllus, are known for their sharp cricket sounding call. There are two subspecies of southern cricket frogs: the Florida cricket frog and the coastal plain cricket frog often referred to as the southern cricket frog, and three subspecies of northern cricket frogs: the Blanchard’s cricket frog, the eastern cricket frog, and the coastal cricket frog. The southern cricket frog is found in Louisiana. All three live northern cricket frog species live in Louisiana. The coastal cricket frog lives in southwest Louisiana, while the eastern cricket (known as the northern cricket frog) and the Blanchard’s cricket frogs are found in North Louisiana.
Both northern and southern cricket frogs hang out in North Louisiana. Northern cricket frogs are slightly larger than southern cricket frogs. The adult Blanchard’s cricket frog is only half an inch to an inch and a half long, while the eastern cricket frog grows to between three-quarters of an inch and an inch and a half long. Adult southern cricket frogs grow between half an inch and one and a quarter inches long.
Northern cricket frogs live in 31 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Southern cricket frogs live in 8 states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Cricket frogs tend to live around the edges of slow-moving, permanent bodies of water, like creeks, ditches, ponds, and wetlands. Although they’re solitary, their territories are small, and they live in large groups along the muddy banks of these waterways. In colder climates, they use the moon to migrate upland to brumate.
Folks most often misidentify cricket frogs as their cousin chorus frogs because of their coloration. All cricket frogs are tiny frogs that have a thin belly and brown stripes. Northern cricket frogs are small, bumpy brown or gray frogs with a brown stripe between the front and hind legs, small lines on the legs and feet, and a mottled mouth with black and white spots. Southern cricket frogs can be brown, green, grey, or red with a bright stripe down their backs and a triangle pattern between their eyes.
The easiest ways to tell the difference between northern and southern cricket frogs are the green or brown stripes around the eyes and down the backs of southern cricket frogs and the shape of the repeating line on their legs. The line is smooth on southern cricket frogs and rough on northern cricket frogs. The southern cricket frog also has a light gray or white bar below the brown/black line and a more pointed nose than its northern cousin.
Northern cricket frog tadpoles are brown with green streaks or green with yellow streaks. Southern cricket frog tadpoles are darker with brown stripes. These cricket frog tadpoles born in ditches and overflow areas have black tails that trick dragonflies into attacking the tail instead of the tadpole’s body. Tadpoles born at the edges of lakes and ponds don’t have black tails. As they metamorphosize to froglet and then to adult frog, the pattern changes.
Cricket frogs get their name from their mating call, which sounds like a cricket’s chirp. Male northern cricket frogs’ calls sound like crickets, and southern cricket frogs make a similar, though slower, sound. This call tells other males to get the snap back and females that they’re home and available.
Cricket frogs begin life as cute little herbivores and grow into cute little vicious insectivores. As tadpoles, cricket frogs eat the plants in the waterway where their eggs hatch. Both northern and southern cricket frogs eat small insects. Adult northern cricket frogs eat crickets primarily, while adult southern cricket frogs eat mostly mosquitos.
Cricket frogs are ambush hunters who wait in vegetation or on a bank for lunch to come to them. Southern cricket frogs are aggressive hunters who chase and jump forward and catch prey with their tongues.
A southern cricket frog’s life starts anytime between February and October when it and up to 150 siblings hatch as tadpoles in shallow water. Three months later, the tadpole will complete its metamorphosis to froglet and then to adult frog. The southern cricket frog’s mouth will get larger as it loses its gills and tail and grows its lungs and legs.
During mating season, the male frog will cluster with other frogs at the grassy edges of semi-permanent ditches, ponds, and streams. He’s aggressive during mating season and will attack other male frogs calling in his territory. His call which sounds like a slower version of the northern cricket frog’s call will attract females to the area.
The female southern cricket frog will lay up to 150 eggs one at a time or in groups of ten. She’ll lay eggs up to three times in a single season.
A southern cricket frog’s life starts anytime between February and October when it and up to 150 siblings hatch as tadpoles in shallow water. Three months later, the tadpole will complete its metamorphosis to froglet and then to adult frog. The southern cricket frog’s mouth will get larger as it loses its gills and tail and grows its lungs and legs.
During mating season, the male frog will cluster with other frogs at the grassy edges of semi-permanent ditches, ponds, and streams. He’s aggressive during mating season and will attack other male frogs calling in his territory. His call which sounds like a slower version of the northern cricket frog’s call will attract females to the area.
The female southern cricket frog will lay up to 150 eggs one at a time or in groups of ten. She’ll lay eggs up to three times in a single season.
Cricket frogs are solitary animals, but their territories are generally small, and large numbers of cricket frogs inhabit the same areas near permanent water sources, like creeks, lakes, and ponds. Northern cricket frogs tend to hang out in vegetation and banks of slow-moving water, and southern cricket frogs hang out in tall grassy areas near slow-moving water.
You can find cricket frogs throughout North Louisiana. You’ll have the best luck finding them in the swampy forest areas in national wildlife refuges like Black Bayou Lake, Tensas River, and D’Arbonne and wildlife management areas, like Russell Sage.
Because cricket frogs only dig to three centimeters underground for brumation, deep freezes that last for long periods tend to decimate local populations. Some cricket frogs use crawfish burrows and deep cracks in water banks to get lower into the ground.
You can find cricket frogs almost year-round in North Louisiana. Both northern and southern cricket frogs are diurnal and are active during the day for most of the year. When daytime temperatures reach the mid-80s, they become more nocturnal. So, when you see Bon Jovi everywhere, cricket frogs are out at night. When the nighttime temperatures get too hot, cricket frogs estivate, digging about three centimeters into the cool ground. Cricket frogs are sturdy little creatures that only brumate when the winter weather dips below freezing for several days.
Listen to cricket frogs at the Virginia Herpetological Society website, which provides sketches of the eggs and tadpoles of the “Southern Cricket Frog” and the “Eastern Cricket Frog” subspecies of the northern cricket frog, as well as audio files.
Check out the iNaturalist “Northern Cricket Frogs” and “Southern Cricket Frogs” pages to see range maps, learn about conservation status throughout their range, and read more about the frogs.
Find out more about the cricket frogs’ conservation statuses at the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species “Southern Cricket Frog” and “Northern Cricket Frog pages.”
Learn about southern cricket frogs through websites maintained by the National Wildlife Federation, and the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory,
Learn about northern cricket frogs through websites maintained by the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.
Cricket Frogs v. Predators
Because cricket frogs are so tiny, loads of animals will snatch them up for a midnight snack: birds, fish, reptiles, and even other frogs eat them. Their most common predators are fish, herons, minks, salamanders, and snakes. Adult northern cricket frogs can bounce up to 3 feet in a single leap, and use this skill to evade predators. Southern cricket frogs are even more skilled hoppers, jumping up to 8 feet in a single bound! That’s the equivalent of a person jumping over a building in a single bound. So, southern cricket frogs are pretty much superfrogs. They’ll generally dive into the water or hop toward tall vegetation in water if they’re leaping from a land predator and toward tall vegetation on land if they’re fleeing a water dragon…or, you know, a fish. If one leap doesn’t take them to safety, they’ll use the danger zigzag hop to confuse their dinner guests. Blanchard’s cricket frogs may also burrow into mud.
Most tadpoles die due to the environment or predators making them a midnight snack, and the high mortality of thousands of tadpoles drops the average lifespan of cricket frogs to about four months. Generally, those that live past the metamorphosis phase live at least a year in the wild, and in captivity, these frogs can live up to five years.
Aside from predators, poorly oxygenated water is the top culprit for cricket frog murder. Cricket frogs in poorly oxygenated water can suffer from high mortality rates, even if the oxygen rate improves within 24 hours.
Cricket Frogs and Humans
Cricket frogs eat the bugs that cause disease and are especially beneficial because they feast on those nasty little blood-sucking mosquitos.
Although cricket frogs are listed as least concern by the Red List, the population of the frogs is decreasing, potentially due to drought, fertilizers and pesticides, highway salts, and other pollutants. Because the frogs have a short lifespan, a dip in numbers is difficult for the cricket frogs to raise. The Blanchard’s cricket frog has disappeared from some areas and is listed as a Special Concern in Michigan, but is common throughout Louisiana.
The high mortality rate among tadpoles and the predation of these adult frogs by humans and other animals has caused a decline in frogs and amphibians worldwide. Amphibians have permeable skin, and pollution, habitat destruction, invasive species, and bacteria outbreaks may also contribute to the declining number of amphibians worldwide.