While it doesn’t apply to every species, most parents will do whatever it takes to keep their young alive.
Whether it’s a moose fighting off wolves, bison stopping grizzlies, or a human mother stopping her daughter from hugging a bear, there’s no shortage of examples of parents doing what they can to protect their kids.
Mothers (deservedly) get a ton of the credit for helping the young ones, but as we can see in this video from PBS, the dad’s get in on the action too.
Anyone who’s been fishing knows the sound of a bullfrog. It’s loud, it’s scary, and quite honestly can sound like it’s not from this planet, especially when you consider it’s made by a frog, albeit a big one.
In this clip, we see a bullfrog father keeping watch over his pool of tadpoles. It customary for one male to watch over the swarm of young ones, but this dad was called into action when the hot sun began evaporating the small body of water the tadpoles were swimming in.
According to the narrator, the puddle would have dried up within an hour and all the tadpoles would have been dead, were it not for some quick thinking by the bullfrog.
He wades over to the mud separating the puddle from the larger body of water and begins using all of his strength to push a path for water to flow between the two sections. With each press more and more tadpoles are able to sneak through to safety, until eventually every one is across.
Not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting too much entertainment from a clip of a frog, but man was I wrong. You can almost see a proud smile cross the dad’s face as his children swim by, knowing that he’s the reason they’ll all keep growing.
Put some respect on the bullfrog’s name.
