Here is a short clip of leg-waving behaviour in Cruziohyla calcarifer I thought might be interest. During work I did for my thesis in 2002 I described this and found that it was only carried out by the males, even while they are paired with females, suggesting that the behaviour is territorial rather than for mate attraction. I observed this late one night just as I was about to leave their vivarium – and managed to catch it on film a few nights later! Enjoy!
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Are any other species known to do this or is it just C. calarifer as far as you know?
Hi Louise, Thanks for the interest. As far as I know there are other species that do this leg-waving, but I think only one other neotropical hylid treefrog. In other countries there are frogs, such as the Asian semaphore frogs that have blue webbing and signal from around waterfalls. Apparently they do this to attrcat mates as their call is useless because of the noise of the waterfall. Some Australian frogs also use foot-flagging. You may have seen the harlequin toads on David Attenborough’s Life in Cold Blood’ which ‘wave’. These are realy interesting toads – I will post something about the ones I found in Costa Rica which were really beautiful. All the best, Andrew
I shall look forward to seeing the Costa Rican ones.
I am most intrigued by the Asian frogs-the image of them engaging in such mating dispalys around waterfalls made me smile – I shall be looking into them alot more!
And I do not need much of an excuse to get out my copy of Life in Cold Blood and take another look at the Harlequins.
Thanks again. Louise
[...] of ‘leg-waving’ in phyllomedusines was first witnessed with these captive specimens (http://frogblogmanchester.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/tree-frog-leg-waving/ [...]