🦁 Animal world 🐊 Reptiles and amphibians

The tadpole

📖 In short

A tadpole is a baby frog or toad. It hatches from an egg in the water, with a round head and a long tail, and looks more like a little fish than a frog! Then its shape changes bit by bit until it becomes a frog.

🤩 Did you know?

The biggest tadpoles are found in tropical regions.
In Arabic the tadpole is nicknamed “father of the little tail”.
Depending on the kind, a tadpole takes weeks or months to become a frog.
The tadpoles of some frogs are bigger than the adult frogs themselves!

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Living like a fish

A tadpole lives in water, breathes with gills like a fish, and swims by swishing its tail from side to side. It eats tiny water plants and algae.

🔍 Legs grow

After a few weeks the tadpole grows two back legs, then two front legs. At the same time lungs form inside it, so it starts coming up to the surface to breathe air.

💡 Where did the tail go?

In the end the tail shrinks bit by bit until it disappears, because the tadpole's body absorbs it and uses it as food. Then it climbs out of the water as a little hopping frog.