African clawed frog
For something that used to be a pregnancy test, it still has many more uses.
This is a rather unique and hardy frog, it spends most of its time permanently submerged beneath the water. It only comes up to take a gulp of air and then heads back to the depths. At dusk and at night you can find them floating just beneath the surface hunting for prey.
They are only found out on land during good rains as they make their way from one body of water to another.
They are carnivorous eating whatever they can fit into their mouths and also, like the bullfrog, highly cannibalistic.
They even can be caught by anglers because they will take baited hooks cast out for fish.
By Brian Gratwicke - Flickr: Xenopus laevis, CC BY 2.0, Link
They are relatively unique in that the hind feet have black claws (hence their scientific name xenopus in Greek)
Their nemesis is the African sharptooth catfish and they make excellent bait for catching this species.
I used to collect my bait with a torch and pellet gun at night, as they lie still at the edge of the water. They can then be cut up, placed on hooks and dried, for months of good Barbel fishing.
Their tadpoles are whiskered and look a lot like baby catfish, they are almost completely translucent when young and are seen as large schools suspended in the water.
They were used as a pregnancy test up until more effective methods where devised. Simply injecting a small amount of urine under the frogs skin would cause it to lay eggs, within 12 hours, if the woman was pregnant.
Other posts in this series:
Curious...
I usually think of frogs as being harmless creatures... but one with claws? Wow. Neat post!
...and they can scratch, I know from experience.
Yikes!
I am fascinated by their use as a pregnancy test, thanks for that information!
That's why there are feral populations in a few other countries, due to escapes decades ago.
Again, thank you for sharing something genuinely interesting!
Eyes wide open at the frogs being used as a pregnancy test! I wonder how they figured that out the first time lol Fascinating. ✨
I wonder how they discovered that about pregnancy. Who tried to inject urin of pregnant women into the frog to see if is woman pregnant? hahah sick :)
Most of these things are discovered by accident, the were probably using them in some other laboratory tests and then noticed a correlation.