In our article we want to talk about a possible pet. Meet this common garlic. Recently, completely exotic pets have come into fashion, pushing into the background traditional cats and dogs.
Who is the garlic woman?
The common garlic (pelobates fuscus) is a frog, representative of a whole family of garlic. By the way, this is a small amphibian creature, up to eight centimeters long. Usually the frog has a light gray color or yellow-brown.
But the common garlic woman got its interesting name due to the fact that her skin sometimes gives off a garlic smell. Amphibian glands secrete mucus with such an unpleasant odor in case of danger.
Common garlic: description
If you look at the garlic house, then outwardly it looks like the most ordinary toad, only her skin is completely smooth. The frog has a stocky body, a large head, but the hind legs are quite short. Her eyes are large and bulging, and there are teeth. A light strip stretches along the back.
Common garlic: habitat
Garlic is an unusual creature. It is found in those places where there is soft soil. And this is due to the fact that she loves to rummage in the ground. That is why such frogs are often found in the fields, but only in damp and nighttime. They dig into the soil with the help of the hind legs, which are armed with a spade-like tubercle. The frog spends more time precisely underground at a depth of fifteen centimeters. Moreover, the ground of the garlic house is dug with amazing speed and quickly goes vertically down. In the daytime they sit in minks and go out at night in search of food, but they can hunt only when the air is humid enough, but if it is dry, then they will not even leave their shelter, no matter how much they like to eat. Adult individuals winter from September to April in the minks of rodents, swallows, moles, in pits under the stumps.
The common garlic lives in deciduous and mixed forests, in meadows, vegetable gardens, in swamps and near lakes.
You can meet a frog only at dusk, at night or in the morning, and even then, only when the humidity is sufficient for it. For this reason, the garlic is considered a rather rare species.
Garlic Reproduction
In the reservoirs the frog lives only during breeding, it is about twenty-five days. The spawning process itself occurs in water. The female is able to lay up to 1800 eggs. It should be noted that among all the representatives of amphibians in the garlic house, perhaps the longest hibernation is two hundred days.
The frog spends the entire mating season near a reservoir. The wetter and wetter the summer, the longer the breeding season will last. Females lay their masonry, like threads, directly on plants in ponds.
Then the tadpoles develop about a hundred days. Very small tadpoles are orange in color, later they become golden and brownish. To feed themselves, they take a vertical position and collect the desired feed with their mouth from the water surface. Their diet is plant foods. In shallow water, they prefer not to swim. Tadpoles are quite large, they barely fit in the palm of your hand.
As soon as their forelimbs appear, they instantly leave the pond and go to land, burrow underground and wait for the moment when their tail falls off. The process of development of tadpoles can last from three to five months. Amphibian puberty occurs at the age of three years.
Amphibian nutrition
The common garlic only leads a nocturnal lifestyle and at the same time feels great on land. In the summer, she can make entire trips, leaving the water for six hundred meters. Amphibians rest during the day, and go hunting at night. They hunt insects, worms, snails.
After a nightly feeding, an ordinary garlic maker (photo is given in the article) digs a hole for itself with its hind legs and plunges into the ground with its backside, closing its eyes and nostrils. In order to completely burrow, it takes only a few minutes.
Frogs Self Defense
To protect against enemies, the frog uses a garlic smell. He stands out at the slightest danger and is able to discourage the desire to attack. If, in time, the garlic woman did not manage to hide, then she begins to croak loudly, swells and gets up on her feet. In such a simple way, she tries to increase her size and thereby scare the enemy. Both females and males know how to croak, but they do not have resonators, and therefore they can only be heard by the water. Amphibian lives in the wild for five to six years. And at home, with normal care, these frogs can survive up to eleven years.
The poison of the skin glands of the frog is not dangerous, it can only harm a small number of individuals. For a person, it is not dangerous, but because the frog can be safely taken in hand. Often, the female garlic itself becomes food for snakes, vipers, herons, storks, curlews, falcons, bitterns, black kites, black grouse, owls, owls, owls, badgers, ravens, hedgehogs, ferrets, foxes, minks. As you can see, there are more than enough enemies for such a small creature.
Garlic at home
In principle, an ordinary garlic can also act as a pet. Its captivity should take place in a special terrarium of at least thirty liters. It should certainly be a reservoir, in which water should be changed daily. At the bottom of the tank you need to fill a layer of soil with a thickness of five to eight centimeters, consisting of peat, wood bark and sand. Also, there must be green plants in the terrarium.
For adults, you do not need to additionally warm the air, it will be enough twenty degrees, but you should observe the humidity, it should be at least 75 percent, and it is better if its value is close to 90%. Garlic is a nocturnal creature, and therefore you can not do lighting in the terrarium.
Young tadpoles of a frog should be fed with plant food. Adults need ants, ground beetles, spiders, insect larvae, all this makes up more than eighty percent of their food. Garlic ladies are also very fond of eating earthworms and slugs. You need to buy a frog in pet stores.
Difficulty keeping amphibians
If you decide to keep the frog at home, then you need to evaluate immediately all the difficulties associated with this. Is the common garlic woman so easy to care for? The taxonomy of controlling humidity, and for young individuals also of temperature, should be an indispensable condition for keeping the frog.
In addition, it should be remembered that the terrarium needs to be cleaned very often and water changed daily. It is also not easy to get live food, and to breed it at home is inconvenient, and it is not practical, since it can spread throughout the apartment. Frogs are able to escape from the terrarium and simply die in the apartment from dehydration, and therefore you need to keep it closed. Remember that the garlic is a nocturnal creature, so you should hardly hope that you can watch it in the daytime. This is not a pet that will entertain you, but rather you will need close attention and proper care.
Most likely, the frog will spend most of the time burrowing in sand or substrate, and go out only for food. To maintain normal humidity, the terrarium needs to be sprayed inside with water. And for the refuge of an amphibian, you can put pieces of wood bark inside.
