screaming temporaria

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

[Daniel Kane]

Never seen that before Jeroen, thanks for sharing!

[Carl Corbidge]

Last year outside my house I caught a cat harassing a temporaria and interestingly it was making the same noise, one of the most distressing noises I've ever heard.

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Well thanks for the confirmation, Carl, because I had never heard or read anything about that. My first thoughts were actually "is this real?".

[Michal Szkudlarek]

I heared similar call when I was rescuing R. temporaria from street drainage.

[Gerald Ochsenhofer]

Many thanks for posting that! We once observed the same at a H. arborea (i think it was a female), which we found on a street during a night excursion in Vienna. If I remember it right, it sounded quite similar, but a bit more like a pig squeaking in "mouse - sound/volume"

[Bobby Bok]

The temporaria's in my garden pond are often harassed by local cats and I often hear them making these noises. It's quite loud actually, when I'm sitting behind my computer I can hear it from my garden and I know I have to come into action to save them.

[Sandra Panienka]

That's a cool video, I've seen that a while ago on youtube. There are some other vids of screaming frogs native to North America (I think R. catesbeiana).
I've never observed this behavior in the wild with R. temporaria, but it is cool to read that others did.

[Berislav Horvatic]

Does Pelophylax ridibundus count as well?

Jelić Dušan, Marchand Marc Antoine, Svoboda Petra: Description of an unusual
antipredator vocalization in Marsh Frog, Pelophylax ridibundus (Pallas, 1771),
2nd Mediterranean Congress of Herpetology, Marrakech, Morocco, 23 - 27 May 2011

I've heard it only once in vivo, from a frog being swallowed by a Natrix natrix.
But Dušan Jelić has also made some experiments - publication to follow.

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Thanks, all! The only screaming anuran I ever encountered was a Pelobates syriacus. I never realised this "common" frog could do that as well.