Australian Museum’s Post

Transcript

Looks good. OK, so here's what most of us know about amphibians. You can have a frog in your throat, you can hit the frog and toad, or you could give this a try. So what now? I reckon you wanna kiss. Kissing would be nice, yes. But in all seriousness, frogs are some of the most threatened animals on the planet and they need our help. The Australian Museums 7th annual Frog ID Week starts today and if you own a smartphone, you're one step closer to making a positive difference. From the Australian Museum, we welcome lead scientist of Frog ID, Doctor Jodi Rowley. Welcome. Nice to see you. Thank you. Tell us why frogs are so very important. Well, even though they're kind of small themselves, frogs in healthy ecosystems there should be. A whole lot of them and they're incredibly important. They get eaten by a lot of things, so a lot of other wildlife rely on them. And they also eat a lot of things like invertebrates, including pest species. So we notice when frogs disappear, they're kind of like a glue that holds ecosystems together, right? I'm sorry. We were just very rude. We introduced you, but we're just completely ignored our other special guests on the couch. Who have you got there? I've got Lily. So Lily is a magnificent tree frog. It's a native Australian frog species that lives in the Kimberley and lives are a big a big boy. Yeah, but his name's Lily. Yes, that's gorgeous. Right, Lily Pad. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry if we offended Lily by not introducing the frog first. Tell us about Frog ID week. How? How can we help? How can everyone help? So it's all about people power in frog conservation. So our frogs are in a lot of trouble, and we desperately need more information. And so we need everybody out there with their smartphones to download the free Frog ID app and record the croaks, the rivets, the squeaks, all the weird noises that Australia's frogs make so that we can put frogs on the map. And we can help better understand and conserve our frogs. Ohh, I've got a pond in my place and there's always frogs making a very loud noise. I'll have to maybe do this. Wow. What's the difference between a frog and a toad? Very little actually. So there's about 55 families of frogs and toads in the world. And toads just happen to be kind of slightly different bones. They tend to walk more than hop, have rougher skin. And, and in Australia, obviously they've got those sort of big glands, but a lot of Australia's frogs, little brown, they kind of look a bit toady. So it's often really. Had to tell them apart, but we have no native true toads in Australia. All of our native frogs, which we've got over 250 of them are frogs, not toads. Now, we're glad that you here on the show because after appearing on the Drew Barrymore Show, we thought you might ignore our call. She had a really interesting angle on frogs, right? Let's take a look now. I don't frogs go backwards because they're just predators are usually from behind they're built like a bit of a catapult. So they just kind of their whole body is just to get them leaping most frogs and and it's you can't really reverse that whole situation. Why do I go backwards so much? Ohh. Is that why you're so fascinated because of the metaphor of they can only move forward. Yes, frogs and that I chose well, I was going to ask that, but now the trees yeah, forget about it. Experience. Wow, sorry for the come down. Drew Barrymore to the morning show. I'm glad you made time for us. No, it was it was amazing. I love showing people frogs and hopefully making them fall in love. So yeah, to get to do it in the US to a bigger audience was pretty amazing. OK, stuff. We we hang on. Come come with me. Larry here, because we're gonna get here. Is this. No, this is good. This is what Drew does. Drew Barrymore. She gets really up close. Like she does. Yeah. Remember when she, like, she's sitting up? Practically sits on the lap of her. OK, so she doesn't know. Dog was walking around the studio, almost rolled over it on a wheelie chair, which would have been her. That would have been terrible. This is cool. Maybe we should do that. I wouldn't have had so much garlic last night if I knew this was gonna be this year. I love to see you, Frog. I do. Week. I just head to the morning show.com dot AU running away from you because you know what? You're a predator, and it's moving. The way we're back after this. Hello.