Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have tads and just-morphed froglets of these I caught in a small pond and a pool in South Miami. Roughly 50 miles south, in Key Largo, I found the same species (the one below), and this one must be at least a year old. The pictures are fuzzy because I took them in fairly dark surroundings, but this frog doesn't look like anything I can find information of, and is probably not rare.

Anyway, the froglets and this adult look very much alike. There are no differences that I can see, except that some have dots on their back, which are arranged like dots on a dice, not recklessly. The eyes are a bronzish-red and the pupils are horizontal. On the underside, they have an aqua-bluish tint to the skin of the belly and legs. The face is masked and there is a single white-ish line carried through which is under the mask. I'm trying to provide the best discription, so some of this may seem obvious or irrelevant! Anyway, the skin is mostly smooth, although there are small bumps on the back. The spotted ones have the dots on these bumps. The tadpoles are relatively small as are the froglets, and have their dots (if they end up dotted) and the red eyes well before fully morphing. There are faint bands on the legs, but no markings on the backside/inside of the thighs. I haven't seen the froglets change colors, but the adult here turns to a dark brown when hidden on its Bed-A-Beast in the shadows (I have never seen it any shade of olive or green). Usually, they're a silvery brown, and the skin looks slightly see-through. The snout is rounded, not pointy, and this frog is very agile! It jumps very far for such a small size, but is relatively calm. The little froglets are very active.

I found this one in the picture late at night sitting on the edge of a pot holding a large bromeliad. The only other frogs I found near there were three Cuban tree frogs by a pond, and some greenhouse frogs. The Cubans and the unknown here were very close to the shorline, 50 feet, so I'd guess this species has some salt tolerance. I'm thinking it might be a species of coqui, but none I've found looks similar enough to this. It hasn't called, to the best of my knowledge. It doesn't look quite like any species I've seen pictures of that lives in Florida, either.

Thanks for your help, and sorry about the quality of the photos. Hope you like them, either way

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Alright, seeing as all coqui, from what I read, don't have a tadpole stage, I can rule them out. In fact, I can rule out anything related to them since anything in their class does not breed in open water (or water at all, if they DO have tads), and I found some of these tads in a swimming pool.

You found these in south Fl cause i live in the ft lauderdale area and have never seen them in my life and i live pretty close to you. Wierd huh?

It's weird for my, too.. that's why I'm here trying to figure out what they are. So far, no luck, except I'm coming to believe that they might be Cuban tree froglets, even though they look nothing like adults.

Chesh... I have a good number of my tads with back legs now so it won't be long before I'll have some babies to compare for you. I'm guessing, at this rate, MAYBE another 2 weeks.
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Heather

I'm so anxious to find out--if they're not Cubans, I'll be very happy about it, but then will have to continue the search! If they are, I'll have a bunch of Cubans to get rid of as I can't accomodate that many.

I guess your new morphs have answered it--I've got a bunch of Cubans, too... blech.