Six-legged frog found in Grayson County

A six-legged frog with a hankering for crickets – and apparently local celebrity – has been making the rounds around the county to show off its extra set of limbs where limbs shouldn’t be.

By: News Advance Staff | The News & Advance
Published: July 12, 2010

This frog has a leg – make that two legs—up on the competition.

Since traveling to its new home in a tackle box full of lake water, a young amphibian with a hankering for crickets – and apparently local celebrity – has been making the rounds around the county to show off its extra set of limbs where limbs shouldn’t be.

Dubbed “Sixy” by its discoverer, the frog, which has two legs in front and four in back, was netted in Grayson County’s Hale Lake on July 3.

“I was just catching frogs and didn’t even know it was six-legged until I got in the car,” said 13-year-old Ty Horton who captured the malformed creature along with three normal frogs on a fishing trip to the recreational area at Wythe’s border. “I just looked at him and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ ‘Dad, I caught a six-legged frog.’ ”

On Thursday Ty and his father, Mike, brought Sixy and its friend by the newspaper before going to a pet shop to get the workers’ thoughts on the animal’s auxiliary appendages.

Mike also called the Extension Office and Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to report his son’s find.

After looking at photos of Sixy on Thursday, DGIF biologist J.D. Kleopfer believes Ty’s new pet is a juvenile American bullfrog.

According to him, the extra legs could be the result of anything from a genetic mutation to a parasite.

“It’s not an open and closed case as to what causes these malformations in frogs,” said Kleopfer, who added that it’s been awhile since he’s seen an amphibian with similar deformities.

Some scientists have theorized that parasite infestation, pesticides and even hormones in the water supply could be to blame for the phenomenon.

Amphibians, which spend part of their lives in the water and part on land, are like the “canary in the cage” when it comes to their susceptibility to environmental changes, Kleopfer said.

The Hale Lake frog could also just be an isolated case of mutation, he added, and he expressed an interest in obtaining the specimen for further study. An Indiana University professor whom Kleopfer dubbed an expert in the field said additional frogs with the same deformities from the same lake would likely indicate parasite infestation.

“If you euthanize, be glad to radiograph him for you,” the professor e-mailed.

Ty, though, seemed intent on keeping Sixy in a 10-gallon aquarium and raising him along with the other frogs, turtles, hamsters, hermit crabs and feeder fish in his care.

“I just like animals,” the Scott Memorial Middle School eighth-grader said.