Ethel the Frog
This is Ethel. She lives in a little pond outside our kitchen. She's a green frog. She's about 2 to 2.5 inches (5 - 6.5 cm) long, about double that with her legs outstretched. According to every metric I can find, she's a little girl. Her color is dark, her tympanium is the same size as her eye, she doesn't have knobs on her "hands", she has a white belly, and she likes Abba tunes. (I made that last part up, but she does hum along when I'm listening to Fernando or Dancing Queen.)
Frogs are fascinating little creatures. They have a lung, but they don't have a diaphram. They breath by moving the membrane below their jaw. They can get oxygen through their skin though, but only when they're wet, so if they're in oxygenated water, they don't need to breathe. They're cold blooded, and green frogs can survive being frozen in the winter, as long as they're not frozen too hard. -20 deg F (-29 deg C) is about their limit. They shelter in protected places in order to avoid the worst of it.
