Schools plunge into frog ponds
FROG ponds are set to become the new vegetable patch in Australian schools as students hop on board the craze.
Ponds will be built across the country as part of a partnership involving the Australian Museum, launched at a school in Sydney this week.
The program is part of an initiative to get children and their families involved in helping scientists identify unknown frog species.
It’s mostly done through an app called FrogID, developed by the museum and tech giant IBM, that records and identifies frogs by their call.
More than 20,000 recordings have been made since its November launch.
Australia has 240 known species of frogs but many more remain undiscovered.
“Frogs are yelling at us what species they are so all we have to do is press record,” said Australian Museum’s amphibian expert Jodi Rowley.
Students Ruby Harris, 10, and Mabel Furno, 8, from Camdenville Primary in Newtown, are fans of the ponds.
“We have done a fair bit of work to try and regenerate the population of frogs in our area, so if they just got wiped out it would make me feel very sad,” Ruby said.