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Pixie Frogs as pets are very, very popular these days. It's kind of a joke. The Pixie
name actually comes from the Latin name of the frog, which is Pyxichephalus, which means
small-headed. These are large bodied frogs. Pixie Frogs, or the South American Bullfrog,
are actually the second largest frog in the world, both species coming from Africa. The
Goliath Frog being the biggest. It's really biggest because of its long legs. When you
get to the girth, Pixie Frogs really are some of the biggest frogs on the planet.
I had the privilege of seeing these animals in the wild in the Kalahari Desert, which
is a really strange place to see a frog. I was in Botswana and there was a shrinking
pool there. And it was amazing to see them filled with these adult frogs all vying for
territory, and really trying to stay alive. As in that area of the world, we see two seasons.
It rains six months of the year, like someone turned the faucet on. The water just comes
down and it floods. And then for six months, the water gets turned off up in the sky and
it dries up. We've all seen those videos of animals migrating to try to get to the next
water hole.
Well, Pixie Frogs, because of their small legs and heavy bodies, have no chance of doing
that and they have to stay where they are. So, nature gave them a bunch of reasons to
develop mechanisms to escape the heat. When the pool dries up, the Pixie Frog actually
digs down under the ground and lives for about three months in a cocoon-like state. It secretes
a gelatinous substance off its back and cocoons itself in, really, a case of water. It lives
in there in kind of a suspended animation until the rains come again and it pops up
on the ground and starts another life cycle.
So, the Pixie Frog, in the wild, is really an incredible creature that has adapted in
one of the most inhospitable places on the earth. It's amazing that an amphibian, which
means water, can live in such a place, but the Pixie Frog has done it. African Pixies,
or the South African Bullfrog.