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Ghost Frogs: Heleophrynidae - Physical Characteristics, Behavior And Reproduction, Conservation Status, Natal Ghost Frog (heleophryne Natalensis): Species Account - GEOGRAPHIC RANGE, HABITAT, DIET, GHOST FROGS AND PEOPLE

NATAL GHOST FROG (Heleophryne natalensis): SPECIES ACCOUNT

GEOGRAPHIC RANGE

Ghost frogs live in and around South Africa's Drakensberg Mountains, where some of the world's highest waterfalls are found.


HABITAT

The ghost frogs may make their homes among the forests and sometimes grasslands of the Drakensberg mountain range, which are the highest mountains in South Africa. They can be found from sea level up the mountains' steep slopes to 9,843 feet (3,000 meters), but usually in an area with a swift, rocky river or stream, which is where they mate and have their young.


DIET

The adult diet includes various insects, snails, and other invertebrates (in-VER-teh-brehts), or animals with no backbone, as well as smaller frogs. They apparently are not cannibalistic (can-ih-bull-ISS-tik), which means that they do not eat members of their own species. The tadpoles are vegetarians and eat algae (AL-jee) that they scrape off underwater rocks. Algae are plantlike growths that live in water but have no true roots, leaves, or stems.

GHOST FROGS AND PEOPLE

People rarely see these frogs.


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User Comments Add a comment…

10 months ago

Fond memories of Richard Boycott and me spending a 4 day weekend in the Cederberg, looking for the elusive Ghostfrog, about 1970. We were both poor students and on the last hour of the last day R. yelled; ''I got one!!''At the time it was the most northern find and nobody was exactly sure if it was a new species, if all ghostfrogs were variants of the same species or if there were more further East or West or even which were male or female or where they disapeared to some months of the year.