Froggy joy — no ownership required

Axolotls can regrow whole limbs — and even parts of the heart, spinal cord and brain — without scarring.

Axolotls are “neotenic”: they keep their feathery gills and stay in their baby form for their whole lives.

That permanent axolotl “smile” is just the shape of their mouth — but we are not complaining.

In the wild, axolotls live in just one lake system near Mexico City, and are critically endangered.

Many frogs swallow with their eyes — they pull their eyeballs down into their mouth to help push food down.

Frogs don’t really drink — they soak up water through a patch of skin on their belly called the “drink patch.”

“Amphibian” comes from Greek for “double life” — a nod to living both in water and on land.

A group of frogs is called an army; a group of toads, a knot.

The smallest frog on Earth (Paedophryne amauensis) is smaller than a housefly.

Frogs live on every continent except Antarctica.

The famous movie “ribbit” is really one species — the Pacific chorus frog, recorded near Hollywood.

Tree frogs climb with sticky toe pads that grip wet leaves using a thin layer of mucus.

Red-eyed tree frogs flash their bright red eyes to startle predators — a trick called “startle colouration.”

The grey tree frog can survive winter by letting part of its body freeze solid, then thawing back to life.

Toads don’t give you warts — that’s a myth. Those bumps are just their skin.

The glands behind a toad’s eyes (parotoid glands) make a bitter toxin that says “don’t eat me.”

Many toads dig backwards into the soil using tough “spades” on their back feet.

Poison dart frogs aren’t born toxic — they build their defences from tiny insects they eat in the wild.

Captive-bred dart frogs, raised without those wild insects, are essentially non-toxic.

Some dart frog dads carry their tadpoles piggyback to little pools of water up in the trees.

Salamanders can regrow lost legs and tails — and even parts of their eyes.

Many salamanders breathe through their skin — some (the lungless salamanders) have no lungs at all.

The fire salamander’s bold yellow-and-black pattern is a warning: “I taste terrible.”

Some newts carry one of nature’s most powerful toxins (tetrodotoxin) in their skin.

Many newts live a “triple life” — water baby, land-roaming “eft,” then back to the water as an adult.

A newt can regrow a lost limb, and even parts of its heart and eyes.

Amphibians have been around for over 300 million years — long before the dinosaurs.

Because they breathe through their skin, amphibians are living pollution detectors — sensitive to the health of their home.