1999
BWCA X-Files?
by Ken E. Brown
On August 1, 1997 I had an unusual wildlife experience in the BWCA. I have seen moose, bear, pine martens, deer, otters, beaver, and a good deal of the other critters that inhabit the area. But this day I had a first. At the beginning of the 25 rod portage from Gillis Lake to Bat Lake one of the group members called the rest of us over. Julie had spotted, and was looking at, a RED frog.
The frog was lying beside a rock on the portage trail. It was 2 - 3 inches long (with it's legs tucked) and entirely tomato red. It's entire body was red, not just it's leg or something, though its eyes were black. It seemed OK -- It didn't have any extra legs or eyes on its stomach or anything like that. It was definitely a frog -- not a salamander. It wasn't very active, but didn't seem injured and was very much alive. I had never seen one before. I have always been under the impression that red frogs lived in Brazil or somewhere. I was at a loss to explain it to the others in the group.
We started coming up with theories. "A released pet" -- but why would someone portage miles into the wilderness to release a frog that would die in that environment? "Escaped bait" --why would someone purchase expensive exotic frogs for bait? "Fertilized frog eggs from South America hitching a ride on an aquatic migratory bird" (I like this one) -- but is that even possible? Is it simply a native species that we never noticed before? Could it be a native species with a genetic defect?
This had my curiosity peeked, so when we returned to civilization I did some research on Red Frogs. I checked with the biology department of our local university -- No native red frogs. I talked with some area outdoor writers -- Never heard of native red frogs. Then I contacted the biology departments of four different major universities. I got some leads, but no answers. One lead, a herpetologist (amphibian guys), pointed me to some internet sources, some of which were outside the United States.
I found a reference in the Independent (a British journal, I believe), February 21, 1995, that talked about, "the appearance of orange-, yellow-, cream- and pink-coloured frogs", being noticed in the spring of 1995 in several parts of England. The article pointed to global warming as a possible reason. I found another article written by a professor at the University of Amsterdam entitled, "Albinism and Unusually-Coloured Frogs in the Netherlands, 1995-96". It said in that article that beginning in 1995 there was "an explosion of pink, yellow, & orange frogs" in the Netherlands. Yellow and orange colored frogs were found in many places in 1995 and in even more places in 1996 -- especially the orange. The author went on to say, "It would be interesting to continue the discussion on unusually-coloured frogs and possible climate factors. Moreover, the global and temporal distribution of this phenomenon is unknown. Is it restricted to part of the European are or are there further records of these finds?". Our frog was kind of orangish-red (tomato-like color). It is my theory that our sighting is an example of this phenomenon in North America! It is interesting considering other reports of frog mutations in southern Minnesota -- the ones with the extra legs, eyes, etc.
I've reported our sighting to the authors of the articles, various biology departments, and the special USGS internet site set up for reporting sightings of malformed amphibians (http://www.npsc.nbs..gov/narcam). No word from anyone, so I don't know if anything will come of it. It would be cool if we (OK, Julie) made some important scientific discovery.
So, I wanted to take this opportunity to pick MCA's collective brain. What do you think? Is my theory on track? Is one of the other theories better? Do you have a theory of your own? Has anyone else had such a sighting? AND why has no one responded to our discovery??? Could our report have been noted in ... the X-Files and secreted away in an underground vault? What do you think?
