This Is Really Quite Disturbing: First It Was The Country Turning Blue, Now It's The Frogs -- April 7, 2021

I can't make this stuff up. Link here. 

Frog species turns blue for first time in 700 years.

A moor frog has turned blue in the UK for the first time in 700 years amid calls for the rare creature to be returned to Britain.

The frogs are widespread across Europe, and turn a distinctive shade of blue in Spring as they prepare to mate, from their natural muddy green colour.

They are not found in the wild in the UK, but some limited evidence suggests they lived in our wetlands 700 years ago. Now, a project funded by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs board member Ben Goldsmith is aiming to "rewild" them to this country.

Staffordshire teenagers Harvey Tweats and Tom Whitehurst run Celtic Reptile and Amphibian, a company aimed at breeding extinct and rare amphibians and reptiles, with the home of returning some of them to our countryside.

They managed to get hold of some moor frogs from a Zoological Society of London reptile breeder, who is one of the few people in the country who keeps them in captivity.

They created a breeding enclosure in a plasterer's bath, and played sounds of males mating so they felt like they were surrounded by rivals, and turned bright blue. Normally, they do not turn fully blue in captivity as the sound of hundreds of rivals triggers the change.

Tweats, 17, told The Telegraph: "It's the first time one's gone fully blue in Britain for 700 years, it's a native species, it was found in Britain until about the 13th Century, there are fossils from the Saxon Period in East Anglia and historical references to it in the 13th Century.

Ah, yes, good olde East Anglia. We were stationed there for three years back in the late 1980s. This "frog story" is so British. Sort of takes our minds off other things, doesn't it.