Home Sweet Home

On the edge of a hot forest, a frog hops around looking for a spot to lay her eggs. She needs somewhere safe and wet. But that’s hard to find. It’s the dry season in Myanmar (MYAHN-mahr), the country in Asia where this frog lives.

She finally finds the perfect spot—a cool body of water. It’s smaller than a river or a pond. This frog is going to lay her eggs in an elephant’s footprint! That may sound strange, but a team of scientists recently discovered frog eggs and tadpoles in 20 different sets of Asian elephant footprints.

“Who would have thought that one of the largest land mammals alive today would benefit tiny frogs?” asks scientist Steven Platt.

Platt and his team first made the discovery at a wildlife reserve in Myanmar in 2016. Some footprints hold only about a soda can’s worth of water. But other tracks are bigger. And those proved to be the perfect place for tiny frogs to lay their even tinier eggs.

“To a small frog, a water-filled elephant track is a very deep hole,” says Platt.

While the tracks seem big to the frogs, they’re too small for the frogs’ predators to live in. So the footprints provide young frogs a place to safely grow and develop before they hop away.

The water-filled footprints can last for a year. They make the perfect home for frogs during the first two stages of their life cycle.

Frogs aren’t the only animals that get help from elephants. Elephants are a keystone species. That means they have a big impact on their ecosystem.

For example, as Asian elephants stomp through a forest, they create clearings. This makes way for new trees in the area to grow. Elephants also scatter seeds (through their poop!), helping new plants grow. And when elephants pull bark and branches from trees to eat, some extra pieces drop down. Animals like lizards, snakes, and rodents use the tree parts for hiding places.

Unfortunately, Asian elephants are endangered. Experts estimate that there
were more than 100,000 Asian elephants in 1900. But poachers and habitat loss have killed off much of the species. Today only about 15,000 of the animals are left in the wild. Scientists are working hard to save them.

“Our study highlights how different species are connected,” Platt says. “The disappearance of Asian elephants could affect many other animals.”

1. Why is an elephant’s footprint a good spot for a frog to lay its eggs?
2. What impact do elephants have on their ecosystem?
   
3. What is the purpose of the diagram on page 4?