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Fun Facts
Did You Know?
Southern leopard frogs are primarily nocturnal, especially in warm months, spending their days hidden in grassy vegetation near water and emerging at night to hunt and, during breeding season, to call. When threatened, their escape pattern is distinctive — high explosive leaps in sequences of three, aimed at the nearest water, followed by a dive to the bottom. They will often angle their leaps unpredictably rather than running a straight line, which makes them harder to track and catch. They are also willing to wander from water more than most frogs. During summer, southern leopard frogs may…
If This Animal Could Talk...
"Watch closely, respect my space, and let my habitat explain the rest of the story."
The Most Common Frog You Will Step On in North Louisiana, the One That Sounds Like Someone Rubbing a Balloon, and the Reason Your Dog Keeps Staring at the Wet Grass The southern leopard frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus) is the frog that erupts from the grass before you see them, launches toward the nearest water in three explosive leaps, and hits the surface and disappears before you have finished processing what just happened. You had enough time to register green, spotted, fast.
What Is the Southern Leopard Frog Often Confused With?
Southern leopard frogs run two to three and a half inches for most adults, with the largest documented individuals reaching five inches — which is a substantial frog. The color is green or brown, sometimes both on the same individual, with rounded dark spots scattered across the back, sides, and legs. The spots are irregular, the way leopard spots are irregular, and that irregularity is the first thing that distinguishes southern leopard frogs from pickerel frogs, who have rectangular spots in two tidy parallel rows. If the spots look organized, it is not a southern leopard frog.Two prominent ridges — the dorsolateral folds — run from behind the eyes to the hips. The head is more sharply pointed than many other frogs, which gives southern leopard frogs a slightly narrow, alert look compared to the rounder faces of bullfrogs and tree frogs. The tympanum, the circular ear disc behind the eye, is roughly the size of the eye and often has a small white dot at the center. This is a useful field mark when you can see it, which requires the frog to hold still for a moment, which they will not do for you.Males are smaller than females and develop enlarged thumbs during breeding season for gripping during amplexus. Males also have paired vocal sacs visible at the corners of the mouth when calling. A white stripe runs along the upper jaw. The inner surfaces of the hind legs are white or pale, which distinguishes the species from the pickerel frog's orange-yellow inner thighs — another useful field mark for the two seconds you have before the frog leaves. The southern leopard frog year is essentially inverted from the calendar most people carry in their heads for frogs. Winter and early spring are the active, social, loud months — the breeding aggregations, the calling, the egg-laying in chilly temporary pools. Summer is the quiet season, when southern leopard frogs disperse into surrounding habitat, hunt the upland margins at night, and go mostly silent until the fall rains bring them back to the water's edge and the whole thing starts again.Fall brings the first rains of the cooler season, and with them the first calling males. October and November choruses in North Louisiana are largely southern leopard frogs, and hearing that balloon-rubbing chorus from a flooded ditch in November is one of the more disorienting seasonal experiences for people who assume frogs are a spring and summer phenomenon. The frogs do not care what you assumed. The rain came down and the pool filled up and the calling started, same as it always does.By late spring the breeding season winds down and the frogs scatter. The tadpoles that survive predation and pool drying emerge as froglets through early summer. By July and August — the hottest, driest stretch of a Louisiana summer — the calling has stopped, the breeding pools have dried, and southern leopard frogs are wherever there is enough shade and moisture and insects to sustain them until fall comes back around and the whole cycle starts again.
Drag the handle left and right to compare Southern Leopard Frog side by side with the species it gets mistaken for most.
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Accessibility
Accessibility
Southern leopard frogs are arguably the most accessible amphibian in North Louisiana, because they make themselves known without any help from you. After any significant rain during the cooler months — October through March — check the edges of ponds, flooded fields, roadside ditches, and any low-lying wet area for calling males. The balloon-rubbing call carries well and is distinctive once you have heard it described. You do not need a trail or a wildlife refuge.
You need rain, a county road, and open windows.For visitors who are blind or have low vision, the southern leopard frog breeding chorus is one of the most available amphibian audio experiences in the region. It runs through the fall and winter months when most other frogs are quiet, which means the leopard frog chorus is not buried under layers of other species. A flooded roadside ditch after an October or November rain, windows down, will produce it consistently. The chuckling, grunting, rubber-balloon quality of the call is distinctive enough to identify on first hearing once you know what to listen for.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does Southern Leopard Frog live in North Louisiana?
Yes. The Most Common Frog You Will Step On in North Louisiana, the One That Sounds Like Someone Rubbing a Balloon, and the Reason Your Dog Keeps Staring at the Wet Grass. They are everywhere, they are abundant, and they have been quietly jumping into ponds ahead of you your entire life in North Louisiana, which is a thing you did not know you needed to reckon with but here we are.
They also breed in winter, which is backwards from what you would expect, and they sound like someone rubbing an inflated balloon, which is not what you would expect either, and between those two facts they manage to be simultaneously the most common frog in North Louisiana and the one most frequently encountered without being recognized.
How do you identify Southern Leopard Frog?
Southern leopard frogs run two to three and a half inches for most adults, with the largest documented individuals reaching five inches — which is a substantial frog. The color is green or brown, sometimes both on the same individual, with rounded dark spots scattered across the back, sides, and legs. The spots are irregular, the way leopard spots are irregular, and that irregularity is the first thing that distinguishes southern leopard frogs from pickerel frogs, who have rectangular spots in two tidy parallel rows. If the spots look organized, it is not a southern leopard frog.Two prominent ridges — the dorsolateral folds — run from behind the eyes to the hips. The head is more sharply pointed than many other frogs, which gives southern leopard frogs a slightly narrow, alert look compared to the rounder faces of bullfrogs and tree frogs. The tympanum, the circular ear disc behind the eye, is roughly the size of the eye and often has a small white dot at the center. This is a useful field mark when you can see it, which requires the frog to hold still for a moment, which they will not do for you.Males are smaller than females and develop enlarged thumbs during breeding season for gripping during amplexus. Males also have paired vocal sacs visible at the corners of the mouth when calling. A white stripe runs along the upper jaw. The inner surfaces of the hind legs are white or pale, which distinguishes the species from the pickerel frog's orange-yellow inner thighs — another useful field mark for the two seconds you have before the frog leaves. The southern leopard frog year is essentially inverted from the calendar most people carry in their heads for frogs. Winter and early spring are the active, social, loud months — the breeding aggregations, the calling, the egg-laying in chilly temporary pools. Summer is the quiet season, when southern leopard frogs disperse into surrounding habitat, hunt the upland margins at night, and go mostly silent until the fall rains bring them back to the water's edge and the whole thing starts again.Fall brings the first rains of the cooler season, and with them the first calling males. October and November choruses in North Louisiana are largely southern leopard frogs, and hearing that balloon-rubbing chorus from a flooded ditch in November is one of the more disorienting seasonal experiences for people who assume frogs are a spring and summer phenomenon. The frogs do not care what you assumed. The rain came down and the pool filled up and the calling started, same as it always does.By late spring the breeding season winds down and the frogs scatter. The tadpoles that survive predation and pool drying emerge as froglets through early summer. By July and August — the hottest, driest stretch of a Louisiana summer — the calling has stopped, the breeding pools have dried, and southern leopard frogs are wherever there is enough shade and moisture and insects to sustain them until fall comes back around and the whole cycle starts again.
What does Southern Leopard Frog eat?
People have lived here their whole lives hearing that call from every wet ditch in November and assuming it was some kind of insect, or machinery, or something they could not identify and eventually stopped thinking about. They prefer temporary pools and ephemeral water bodies specifically because those habitats do not support fish populations, and fish eat tadpoles at a rate that makes permanent water a gamble not worth taking. Diet is whatever fits in their mouth, taken alive: arthropods, worms, small crawfish, small fish, other frogs, salamanders, small snakes.
Is Southern Leopard Frog dangerous to people?
No. This species is not dangerous to people when it is observed without handling or disturbance
