Seychelles Frogs: Sooglossidae

The four Seychelles frogs usually stay out of sight under piles of leaves lying on the rainforest floor, inside cracks in rocks, and even within hollow plant stems or on the base of a leaf where it attaches to a stem. The Seychelles palm frog, for example, hunkers down in the leaves of palm and sometimes banana trees. Usually, only rains will bring the Seychelles frogs out of their hiding places. During these wet periods, the frogs will hop about day or night looking for food. Thomasset's frog often settles on a streamside rock after sunset and waits for flying insects to zip by closely enough for it to capture and eat them.

The mating season occurs during the rainy season. Males may call during the day or at night from under leaves or from one of their other hiding spots. Unlike the males of many other types of frogs, males in the Seychelles frog family do their calling alone and from their own personal, on-land location. In other frogs, the males often group together in one place—usually in the water—and all call at the same time.

From the "wrracck toc toc toc toc" of the Thomasset's frog to the high "peep" of the Gardiner's frog, each species has its own call. To mate, the male climbs onto the female's back and uses his front legs to hang just in front of her hind legs. Although scientists do not know how some of these frogs lay their eggs or how those eggs develop into frogs, they do have details about Gardiner's frog and the Seychelles frog species. The female Gardiner's frog lays her eight to 15 eggs in a hiding place on the ground and stays with them. Instead of hatching into tadpoles, these eggs hatch in three to four weeks right into tiny froglets, each one about 0.12 inch (3 millimeters) long—no bigger than a grain of rice. As the froglets hop away, the female's job is done and she leaves. In the Seychelles frog species, the female lays her eggs on land and stays with them just as the Gardiner's frog does, but her eggs hatch in two to three weeks into tadpoles. Without water to swim in, the tadpoles instead wiggle up and cling to the mother's back. They stay there until a short while after they turn into froglets, and finally hop off to live on their own.

As yet, scientists are not sure how Thomasset's frogs or the Seychelles palm frogs mate, where the females lay their eggs, whether their eggs develop into tadpoles or right into froglets, and if the adult female or adult male watch over their young. They do know, however, that the female Thomasset's frog lays large eggs, and they think this may mean that her eggs skip the tadpole stage and hatch right into froglets. All frog species with eggs that hatch into tadpoles go through what is known as indirect development. Those whose eggs skip the tadpole phase and develop directly into froglets go through direct development.