ely on concealment
for protection and may allow close approach before it flushes again.

Less frequently, undisturbed individuals have been seen wandering on the
soil surface. Such wandering occurs chiefly at night. Diurnal wandering
may occur in relatively cool weather when night temperatures are too low
for the frogs to be active. Wandering above ground is limited to times
when the soil and vegetation are wet, mainly during heavy rains and
immediately afterward.

Pitfalls made from gallon cans buried in the ground with tops open and
flush with the soil surface were installed in 1949 in several places
along hilltop rock outcrops where the frogs were abundant. The number of
frogs caught from day to day under varying weather-conditions provided
evidence as to the factors controlling surface activity. After nights of
unusually heavy rainfall, a dozen frogs, or even several dozen, might be
found in each of the more productive pitfalls. A few more might be
caught on the following night, and occasional stragglers as long as the
soil remained damp with heavy dew. Activity is greatest on hot summer
nights. Below 20 deg. C. there is little surface activity but individuals
that had body temperatures as low as 16 deg. C. have been found moving
about.

Frogs uncovered in their hiding places beneath flat rocks often remained
motionless depending on concealment for protection, but if further
disturbed, they made off with the running and hopping gait already
described. Although they were not swift, they were elusive because of
their sudden changes of direction and the ease with which they found
shelter. When actually grasped, a frog would struggle only momentarily,
then would become limp with its legs extended. The viscous dermal
secretions copiously produced by a frog being handled made the animal so
slippery that after a few seconds it might slide from the captor's
grasp, and always was quick to escape when such an opportunity was
presented.

TEMPERATURE RELATIONSHIPS

Ant-eating frogs are active over a temperature range of at least 16 deg.
C. to 37.6 deg. C. They tolerate high temperatures that would be lethal
to many other kinds of amphibians, but are more sensitive to low
temperatures than any of the other local species, and as a result their
seasonal schedule resembles that of the larger lizards and snakes more
than those of other local amphibians. The latter become active earlier
in the spring.

Earliest recorded dat