Amphibians
Cricket Frog
Acris · also called northern cricket frog, southern cricket frog
A cricket frog is a thumbnail-sized frog with a call that sounds nothing like a frog and everything like two pebbles being clicked together, faster and faster. It belongs to the tree frog family but stays on the ground, and its defence is a jump so large and so erratic — over a metre from a 3-centimetre body — that a predator simply loses it.
Overview
Cricket frogs are the genus Acris, tiny frogs of the central and eastern United States, at the sunny, shallow, weedy edges of ponds, marshes, ditches, and slow streams. They are members of the tree frog family that gave up climbing — their toes have almost no adhesive pads — and live among grass and mud instead. They are day-active insectivores, eating mosquitoes, midges, ants, and small beetles.
The click and the leap
The name is all about the call: a series of sharp metallic clicks that speed up into a rattle, like a cricket or two steel balls tapped together. And for a 2–4 cm animal the jump is extraordinary — well over a metre, more than 30 times its body length, in a zigzag that skips across open water. Colour varies wildly between individuals, from grey and brown to green or red, for camouflage against any background.
A collapse at the northern edge
The northern cricket frog was once the most abundant frog in the American Midwest and has now vanished from most of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. No single cause is confirmed — wetland loss, pesticides, the chytrid fungus, and poor tolerance of cold winters are all implicated — which makes the species a watched indicator of wetland health.
Status
Both main species are Least Concern overall and still abundant in the south, but the trend is decreasing and the northern species is listed as endangered or of concern in several northern states.
Cricket Frog: common questions
Is a cricket frog a type of cricket, or a frog?
It is a frog, and a very small one, in the tree frog family Hylidae. The name comes entirely from the call. A chorus of male cricket frogs produces a rapid, dry, clicking, ratcheting sound that closely resembles the stridulation of an insect, particularly a cricket, and early naturalists named the animal for it. Nothing about the frog is insect-like beyond the sound and the tiny size. There are two widely recognised species in the United States, the northern cricket frog and the southern cricket frog, plus Blanchard's cricket frog, which is sometimes split off from the northern.
Why is the northern cricket frog disappearing?
It is one of the more troubling amphibian declines in North America because it was so common. Through the mid-20th century the northern cricket frog was often the most abundant frog in Midwestern wetlands, and then from around the 1970s it began vanishing from the northern third of its range, disappearing from most sites in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and parts of nearby states while remaining common further south. No single cause has been pinned down. Leading suspects include the draining and degradation of small wetlands, runoff of pesticides and fertilisers, the amphibian chytrid fungus, competition and predation pressures, and the frog's poor tolerance of long, cold winters at the range edge, possibly interacting with a changing climate.
How far can a cricket frog jump?
Extremely far for its size. A cricket frog is only 16 to 38 millimetres long, but it can cover well over a metre, and sometimes close to two metres, in a single leap, which is more than 30 and up to around 60 times its body length. It also jumps in an erratic zigzag pattern and readily leaps out across open water, skittering over the surface in several hops before diving. This combination of a huge, unpredictable jump from a hard-to-see animal is its main defence, since it has no toxins and little other protection.
What does a cricket frog sound like?
Like someone slowly clicking two small stones or steel marbles together, starting with a few separate clicks and then accelerating into a rapid rattle before stopping. People often mistake it for an insect. The northern cricket frog's call is a hard gwick gwick gwick, while the southern cricket frog's is a slightly softer, more clicking gick gick. Males call from the ground or floating vegetation at the edges of ponds and marshes from late spring through summer, and on a warm evening a good wetland can hold dozens of overlapping callers.