Alberta has the bighorn sheep. Manitoba has the plains bison. Yukon has the raven. So what’s Ontario’s official animal?
We don’t have one — yet.
The loon is our official bird, but we can’t help but think that Ontario’s other furry and feathery (and slippery and leathery) denizens haven’t been given a chance to compete.
That’s why, over the next eight weeks, TVO.org will be giving 16 Ontario animals their turn in the spotlight. You’ll learn about how they live, what threats they’re facing, and how they reflect the province’s character. At the end of the series, you’ll get the chance to make your voice heard — and to vote for your favourite critter.
The winner may not end up on a flag or a coat of arms. But they’ll get a fancy title: Ontario’s unofficial official animal.
Click here for complete voting information, including matchup schedules.
The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, 1754. (Biodiversity Heritage Library/Flickr)
Species/scientific name: Lithobates catesbeianus
Adult size: Though they begin life as tadpoles, adults can grow to around 20 centimetres long. Females are usually bigger than males.
Adult weight: About one pound
Longevity: Bullfrog tadpoles grow for up to three years before changing into frogs. Wild bullfrogs have been known to live nine or 10 years after transforming. It takes them two to four years to reach maturity after metamorphosis.
Feeding and diet: Tadpoles eat organic debris, algae, plant tissue, and small aquatic invertebrates. Adult bullfrogs will hunt and eat pretty much any animal they can swallow.
Predators: Herons, predatory fish, snapping turtles, otters, minks
Threats: Harvest by humans, habitat loss, pollution, collisions with vehicles, climate change
Habitat: Bullfrogs need large, permanent bodies of water to breed and hibernate in but can live in temporary bodies of water in the summer. They usually live near water along shorelines with abundant plant life. They hibernate in ponds, rivers, and lakes over the winter.
Range: Bullfrogs are native to southern Ontario and live across most of the region, usually south of Sudbury.
Conservation status in Ontario: Frog legs were popular menu items in the 1980s and early ’90s. The commercial harvest of bullfrogs in Canada ended in 1995, but not before the destruction of many bullfrog populations. The amphibians are returning to some areas where they’d disappeared, but Ontario Nature notes it’s unclear whether their overall numbers are increasing. The species has not been assessed by the Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario or by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. It is not protected under the Ontario Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act.
(Peter Ferguson/Ontario Nature)
"For anybody who has spent time around wetlands, the call of the American bullfrog is just incredibly iconic and the background symphony to our summer,” researcher Patrick Moldowan declares. “I speak on behalf of all Ontarians, I think, in saying that.”
Moldowan is currently based in Algonquin Park, where he serves as the communications director of the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station. The bullfrog’s call (sometimes described as “jug-o-rum”) can conjure forth memories of “being able to be free range and run around in the woods and the wetlands,” he says, adding, “We often hear it in a place that’s calm, serene, and enjoyed with close friends or family.”
Wild fact: When bullfrogs are swallowing something, their eyes recede into their skulls.
But there is more to this “loud and proud” amphibian than nostalgia, says Moldowan, who is also a director at large for the Canadian Herpetological Society. These “kings of the lily pads” are “tenacious” and “a little bit pushy … They stand their ground. They’re quite territorial.”
American bullfrogs are also opportunistic, indiscriminate hunters. Growing up to 20 centimetres long, they’re the continent’s largest amphibians, with “the appetite to boot.” Moldowan describes them as “like Pac Man … half mouth.” He notes they have keen eyesight and can detect subtle movements, using their springy tongues, comparatively strong jaw muscles, and stocky front legs to snatch, grapple with, and swallow their prey whole.
As for their prey? That’s a long list. “They have such a voracious prey response that if they can stuff it into their mouth, it usually goes down the hatch,” Moldowan says. “And even if they can’t, they’ll sure try.” (When bullfrogs are swallowing something, he adds, their eyes recede into their skulls so that those muscles can aid in the process.)
Bullfrogs Eat Everything
Bullfrogs will eat insects, other frogs, birds, and even small mammals. Jeff Hathaway, founder of Scales Nature Park, says he has witnessed a bullfrog chow down on a red squirrel (which was already dead): “I’m not sure I’d get into the details of it. But it’s a good example of how big a thing they can try to eat.”
“I’ve had one try to eat me before,” he chuckles, recalling the time a captive bullfrog leapt at him and tried to grab a bite. Staff at Scales, he says, have had their fingers chomped while feeding or cleaning the bullfrog enclosure; Moldowan says he’s had bullfrogs go after his fingers in the wild.
Hathaway, who has studied amphibians for 27 years, says that once, when he was releasing baby turtles back into the wild, a bullfrog appeared and ate one right in front of him. “Just a frog doing its thing,” he says.
Researcher Patrick Moldowan with an American bullfrog. (Julia Riley)
Bullfrog populations were lost in many parts of Ontario due in large part to commercial harvesting for food. They have since returned to many, but not all, of those areas. Healthy bullfrogs are “great bio-indicators,” Moldowan says, meaning that if they’re doing well, so, too, are their ecosystems. The species is vulnerable to wetland habitat loss and pollution through oil or road salts, he says, and they’re also often run over on roadways — “quite literally the old Frogger game.”
Since bullfrogs take several years to go from tadpoles to frogs, they need continuous freshwater habitats, Hathaway says, adding that people can help the species by preserving wetlands and natural vegetation that grows in and near bodies of water. People often pare these plants back, but bullfrogs rely on them for protection from their predators, which include herons, snapping turtles, otters, and minks. Moldowan and Hathway also say people should refrain from stocking fish in ponds, as predatory fish will eat frog eggs and larvae.
American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus)
Female bullfrogs can lay up to 20,000 eggs at a time, but few ever become adults. “The frogs that we see that are so characteristic sitting on their lily pads have really run quite a gauntlet of predators and have defied the odds,” Moldowan says.
As for why the American bullfrog should be Ontario’s unofficial official animal?
“It’s a symbol of our wilderness, a symbol of our wetlands. These are landscapes that, as Ontarians, we cherish and are so fortunate to have,” Moldowan says. “I think that iconic call that echoes across the landscape in the middle of summer is really the cry of Ontario. It’s the sort of thing that that we connect with. And, in turn, it connects us to the wild landscape.”
This series is produced with the assistance of Ontario Nature.