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Day 42

It's interesting to see the difference in behavior between tadpoles and frogs - tadpoles react to light changes, frogs react to movement. Tadpoles don't react to my turning on the light in the morning due to it being so dim initially before brightening. African Clawed Frogs don't react to noise, they react to vibrations and changes in light. As you walk by the tank, you'll see one or two swim away due to the change in light as the shadow crosses over them. The tadpoles seem to have become more social over time, African Clawed Frogs are fairly social animals and will constantly press up against one another since they like to squeeze into tight spaces. A few weeks ago, the tadpoles would swim away if touched but now, they have no issue grouping with others. A curious thing you'll notice is despite the tadpoles having a tendency to clump together, they don't really exhibit any schooling behavior or a herd mentality.

If a small number of people in a crowd begin to run, there's a good chance a chain reaction will cause the rest of the crowd may begin to run as well. With the tadpoles, however, it doesn't matter how many have gathered together, if one or two tadpoles swim off when startled, unless the other tadpoles themselves have been startled, they'll simply move out of the way of the fleeing tadpoles to resume their previous activity.

Squiggly and Strangelove are doing better. Strangelove is now swimming completely normally and outside of being extremely small and developmentally lagging by several weeks, appears to be otherwise healthy. Based upon Strangelove's full recovery from seeming to be paralyzed on one side, I remain of the opinion that the cause that fits the symptoms the closest is a stroke, which is not unheard of in African Clawed Frogs. Squiggly is improved as well (and is even able to swim right side up now!) but is still worryingly deformed. At this point, the only thing to do is wait and see, there's a possibility that the spine may correct itself further since much of the malformation has occurred in the tail but there's still quite a bit of malformation in general.

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