Frogs’ Extra Legs Earn Scientists’ Scrutiny

It’s enough to make a French chef drool.

In Dixonville, near Roseburg, An juli O’Neill found a frog with six legs.

Over in La Pine, 10-year-old Brandy Park’s frog had 11.

Her mother called Chris Carey, a nongame biologist with the Department of Fish and Wildlife in Bend, who checked the pond and found several more deformed creatures. He packed them off to the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.

The finds coincide with others in Oregon and elsewhere.

Similar deformities showed up last summer in the Portland suburb of Aloha and in the southern Oregon town of Wimer. Deformed bullfrogs have turned up in Eagle Creek east of Portland.

In recent years they have shown up in 17 states and two Canadian provinces.

The North American Reporting Center for Amphibian Malformations in Jamestown, N.D., says there is evidence the deformations are due to a parasitic flatworm called a trematode.

Other experts suspect herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers and other chemicals may play a role, but scientists note that no new farm chemicals have been widely introduced.