Sunday, August 28, 2011

Mating..............

Hmmmm made you look huh? Well this is a lesson on animal mating. Brought to you by my Nature Boy Tanner. This is one of the thousands of reasons why I LOVE HOMESCHOOLING.......... my sweet Blessings. OK so Tanner had a large watering trough that he made into a turtle and frog sanctuary. He worked on design, structure and appearance. Yes he was serious. He made 1/2 dirt and 1/2 water. Took a lot of trial and error but he got it. He had rocks for the turtles to bask in the sun and fresh bowls for fresh water and food. I let him do this because he was really into keeping his animals safe and happy.One day I found these pictures on my camera and thought wow he is Really Serious. He even had done some Internet research and had dates written on calendar. So here is the lesson he taught me.


When Frogs mate, the male frog tends to clasp the female underneath in an embrace called amplexus. He literally climbs on her back, reaches his arms around her "waist", either just in front of the hind legs, just behind the front legs, or even around the head. Amplexus can last several days! Usually, it occurs in the water, though some species, like the bufos on the right mate on land or even in trees!
http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/cycle.html

Here are his pictures to document the "ACT"






Now here are a few pictures of his beloved turtles. We have many many turtles that visit us every spring. They live in our land and we see them daily. The kids have named many of them and we hang out with them for a while them put them right back. We enjoy turtle racing, turtle feeding and turtle love while they visit. We are known to have turtle or two in our tub and walking around the house. YES all areas are thoroughly cleaned afterwards :) The kids have special names like..... Gimpy(he lost a part of his front leg). Fireball because of his coloring and he is the fastest. Maggie because she is one of the few girls. Bigfoot because he is the largest turtle. Little Suzie because she is dainty. Now how do they know which ones is a male or female? The eyes color is a factor, their tails and something to do with their shell :0 Enjoy some turtle love folks!!!





3 comments:

{amy} said...

You learn something new every day... :)

Crystal Keilers, that's me. said...

Uh totally made me look. You just posted pictures of frogs mating! Wow.

Let me say that you live in a boys dreamland. Your boys will be so grateful that when they got older they grew up around dirt and frogs and turtles and hunting with their daddy. So way cool.

Ginger said...

See? Who needs $ex education books? Just expose your kids to nature. They'll figure it all out w/o having a major freak-out moment. :D