Common reed frog

The common reed frog is a captivating species of tree frog belonging to the Hyperoliidae family. These frogs inhabit various African countries, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. There have also been potential sightings in the Central African Republic, Chad, and Eritrea.

These frogs demonstrate remarkable adaptability, thriving in a wide array of environments. You can find them in forests, savannas, shrublands, and grasslands, as well as near rivers, swamps, lakes, and marshes. They are also quite at ease in human-modified landscapes such as gardens, urban areas, degraded forests, ponds, irrigated land, and canals.

Interestingly, there is some evidence suggesting that certain West African reed frogs might exhibit a rare behavior known as sequential hermaphroditism, where an individual changes sex from female to male after breeding. Unlike simultaneous hermaphrodites, which possess both male and female reproductive organs concurrently, sequential hermaphrodites switch genders at different stages of their lives. However, this phenomenon has only been observed once in a captive colony of reed frogs, and the scientific community remains skeptical about amphibians undergoing this process. The notion of frogs changing sex was popularized by the movie "Jurassic Park" but it continues to be a subject of debate among researchers.