Photographer: Susan Godin
Location: London, Ontario
Prize-winning entry in "Reflections of Nature Photo Contest
sponsored by The Canadian Wildlife federation
http://www.cwf-fcf.org/en/resources/multimedia/photo-club/wildlife.html
To read an article entitled, "Global Appetite for Frog Legs Could Contribute to the Amphibian’s Extinction at the Time Magazine website please click on the following link:
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/08/01/global-appetite-for-frog-legs-could-contribute-to-the-amphibians-extinction/
It seems that humans have been caught again acting greedy and obssesive, this time in terms of our over-consumption of another form of life on this planet-frogs. Why is it bad that humans are reducing the population of frogs on our planet? Scientists indicate:
That a frog's role in the ecosystem is that they eat insects (which may be harmful to us and other life), they eat fish,some large insects,snakes,lizards,larger frogs,birds and small carnivorous (meat-eating) and omnivorous (those animals which eat many types of food) mammals.In other words the species of Frogs which live on our planet, keep the aquatic ecosystem they live in in balance. It seems we humans are often found to cause ecosystems to put ecosystems out of balance!
In an article at the Sciencedaily.com website entitled, "Ecosystem-Level Consequences Of Frog Extinctions" I found the following statement:
"A University of Georgia study that is the first to comprehensively examine an ecosystem before and after an amphibian population decline has found that tadpoles play a key role keeping the algae at the base of the food chain productive."Many things that live in the stream depend on algae as a base food resource,” said lead author Scott Connelly, a doctoral student who will graduate in December from the UGA Odum School of Ecology. “And we found that the system was more productive when the tadpoles were there.” source:http://www.sciencedaily.co
Some people may say, okay, we have been eating frogs legs for thousands of years as a species,and nothing has ever happened to these ecosystems where they live before. Well I would answer this rationalization by saying that now we have scientific research that we are overconsuming a species of life on this planet. We have more people on this planet than we ever have had before in the history of the World. Too many people are eating frogs' legs as part of their daily routine of living. Those of you who do eat frogs legs need to change your behavior, because if you do not the ecosystems within which frogs life may collapse if you do not change your behavior and eat less frogs legs.
"Adult amphibiansare the best biological pest controllers. Invertebrates and vertebrates alsopredate them. Because of their importance in ecosystem, decline or extinction oftheir population has significant impact on other organisms along with them."
"Fromthe ecological perspective, amphibians are regarded as good ecologicalindicators. Due to high degree of sensitivity, either during tadpole stage or asadults, they respond to very slight change in the environment. Such responseshave been used to indicate habitat fragmentation, ecosystem stress, impact ofpesticides, and various anthropogenic activities."
If Frogs disappear or their populations are sharply reduced on this planet, we can all expect to have to deal with insect pests such as mosquitoes and flies in a much more inconvenient and uncomfortable basis each and every day when these insect pests exist in our countries. And if this is the case then we can also expect that more people become ill with diseases which are spread by these insect pests! Isn't this a good incentive for people to stop eating frogs legs? I think it is!
