#30DaysWild day 18: Tadpoles

We have a tank of tadpoles in our kitchen at the moment. They provide hours of entertainment and watching what they're up to has become very addictive. We've only ever had them in the fish pond, or in a big bucket outside before, so their glass sided tank has really allowed us to observe them closely and see what they do under the water and how they change over time.

First thing to say about them is that they love fish food pellets and will nibble away at them quite happily for what seems like hours. If there's a loud noise nearby, they dash to the bottom of the tank to hide and generally spend the rest of the time going up and down slowly between the top and bottom of the tank. 

We recently noticed their bodies change shape to become much squarer and tiny legs started to appear. Their tails thickened out, with a thinner transparent layer around the original thick part of the tail.

Then today we spotted that a couple of them had changed completely. They're much more frog shaped and their legs have grown, although they still have their tails. They're a much paler colour. Our tadpoles are turning into froglets!

Some strange behaviour that we've noticed is that the tadpoles seem to chase the froglets around and nibble/suck them. Not sure what's going on, but the froglets don't seem to mind too much and will even float around on their backs while the tadpoles do it. If they get fed up with it, they climb up onto a lily pad to escape.

Looking forward to watching what else they get up to as they grow.