Overview
Blanchard’s Cricket Frog (Acris blanchardi) is a miniature, energetic semi-aquatic frog famous for its distinctive breeding call, which sounds exactly like two marbles or steel ball bearings being rapidly clicked together. Although classified taxonomically within the tree frog family (Hylidae), this non-arboreal ground dweller has tiny toe pads and spends its entire life on the muddy shorelines of sunny prairie ponds and slow streams.
Biology and Physical Characteristics
Acris blanchardi has a warty, bumpy skin texture that resembles a miniature toad. Its coloration is highly variable and cryptically mottled in shades of grey, tan, and olive-brown, almost always featuring a dark triangle between the eyes and often a bright green or reddish stripe down the middle of the back. It features long, muscular hind legs with extensively webbed toes adapted for explosive zigzag leaps across open water.
Behavior and Ecology
A diurnal shoreline specialist, Blanchard’s Cricket Frog sits on exposed mudbanks and floating mats of duckweed, basking in the sun and snatching insects. When startled by a heron or snake, it executes astonishing, acrobatic leaps spanning over three feet—nearly 30 times its own body length—leaping across the water’s surface in multiple skips before diving into underwater mud.
Conservation and Human Impact
While assessed as Least Concern globally by the IUCN, Blanchard’s Cricket Frog has suffered severe, mysterious population crashes across the northern edges of its range in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Research points to sensitivity to agricultural chemical runoff, wetland drainage, and heavy herbicide applications along breeding shorelines.
Interesting Factoid
Blanchard’s Cricket Frog is an Olympic jumper of the frog world: this tiny one-inch amphibian can leap more than three feet in a single bound—equivalent to a human leaping over a six-story building.