Found In A Local Creek—

Lou The White Frog Is A Connecticut Rarity

By Nancy K. Crevier

Frogs in the house are not unusual for Angie and Steve Taylor of Newtown and their 14-year-old son, Matt. “We raised frogs all summer,” explains Mrs Taylor. “We found eggs in our pool when we opened it this past summer and we brought them in. Forty to 50 of them hatched. We went through buying them fruit flies, then we started releasing them in the creek. It was so much fun.”

Those frogs were common tree frogs, whose loud trilling fills the area swamp and woodlands during the spring and summer. But about two months ago, Matt found an unusual specimen as he dallied by the creek near their Scudder Road home.

This frog was all white, with black eyes. Mr Taylor says, “We looked it up online and it didn’t seem too rare. Just a mutant frog.” Because it looked unique, though, the family kept it over the summer. The frog was set up in an aquarium habitat, where he spent most of his days resting on a rock near the water. Says Mrs Taylor, “We didn’t even think it would live.”

The white frog did live, however, and on a diet of crickets and mealworms that the Taylors bought for him and by September “Lou Albino” (named after the pro wrestling manager Lou Albano) had doubled his original size, to three inches.

With chilly weather threatening, the Taylors decided it was time to prune their menagerie. In addition to Lou, they own two dogs, Jake and Luke, one turtle, one finch, and two tree frogs. The white frog, they decided, would have to find a new home. “At one point,” Mrs Taylor says, “I said, ‘Just release him in the creek before it gets too cold.’”

Concerned that the white frog would quickly get picked off by predators if returned to the wild, Matt and his dad thought it might be worthwhile to see if the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport would be interested in their odd frog. To their surprise, the offer generated great curiosity at the zoo.

“They were very excited,” says Mr Taylor. “It didn’t seem like they had seen it [a white green frog] before.”

J.T. Warner, a zookeeper at Beardsley Zoo, says that the Taylor’s frog is a common green frog, related to the bullfrog, but has a genetic condition. “It is leucistic,” he says, “which means it lacks black pigment.” Lou is not an albino, another genetic condition in which the substance that gives color to the skin, hair, and eyes is deficient.

The Taylors’ find is intriguing to the zoo, as any animal with a color deficiency is peculiar, says Mr Warner. “For an animal like this to make it to adulthood is extremely rare,” he goes on, noting that a white animal in the wild sticks out, making it an easy victim. Even a green frog without genetic oddities lives only about three to four years in the wild, says this amphibian expert. It is surprising that the white frog made it past the tadpole stage, and good luck for this creature that it was brought into captivity, he says. “In the wild, everything is trying to get rid of that [white] gene,” Mr Warner explains.

Not only was the Beardsley Zoo intrigued, but Gregory Watkins-Colwell, a zoologist and research collector for the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, has been anxious to examine the white frog, as well. Mr Watkins-Colwell was contacted by the associate curator of Beardsley Zoo, Jeanne Yuckienuz, who was aware of the museum’s interest in reptile and amphibian oddities.

“I’ve been trying to document abnormalities in the state,” Mr Watkins-Colwell says. “Mostly I’ve been collecting information about physical deformities. Sort of a side project for me is tracking color abnormalities.”

Occasionally, color abnormalities can indicate an environmental change. “What’s interesting,” he says, “is where does this occur? Sometimes there are ‘pockets’ of these mutations. It’s what we call a ‘closed habitat.’ We want to ask how many different oddities there are that are the same in any area.”

Looking for new trends gives the researchers an indication of what is going on in the environment and if there should be any concerns raised. He suspects that this particular frog is just an example of a genetic mutation, but hopes to have the chance in the near future to examine him.

On Saturday, October 29, the Taylor family packed up Lou and brought him to his new home in Bridgeport, where he was enthusiastically welcomed. Like all other newcomers to the zoo, Lou will be quarantined for 30 days. Once he passes the quarantine process, the frog will join another green frog and several other amphibians in a habitat in the Connecticut Reptile and Amphibian Building.

“I know we’d like to go look at him if he goes into the general population at the zoo,” says Mr Taylor. “It would be fun to see him.”