A frog from the Sphaerotheca genus likes the moist environment of elephant dung.
The frog-friendly dung was found in an arid environment during the dry season. Campos-Arceiz suspects the frogs take refuge in the dung during the heat of the day, feeding on the small critters in the dung.
The dung forms a mini-ecosystem, he explained: "elephant dung serves as a germination ground for many plants and fungi and as food and shelter for lots of invertebrate and vertebrate animals."
Frogs were not found in any of 180 nearby cow or buffalo dung heaps studied. Campos-Arceiz thinks this may be due to differences in the digestive systems of elephants, cows, and buffalo.
Elephants eat a large volume of food and pass it through their guts very quickly, resulting in food-rich dung. Cows and buffalo, on the other hand, have a four-compartment gut and digest their food thoroughly, resulting in a dense, fine-grained dung with little remaining food value and few insects or other invertebrates.
Scott Keogh, an evolutionary biologist from the Australian National University in Canberra, says the discovery does make sense. "Finding frogs, when the poos are next to water, is no surprise," he said.
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