Adult female Cuban Treefrogs can be quite a handful.
Cuban Treefrog: Osteopilus septentrionalis.

Color: Variable, often some shade of uniform tan, or occasionally green, bluish green, pasty-white, or mottled. All individuals are capable of a wide range of color changes.

Skin (glandular) secretions: Irritating, toxic

Size: Sexually dimorphic. Males are adult at from1 to 3+ inches, females are larger and bulkier occasionally attaining a snout-vent length of 5 ½ inches.

Food: Besides invertebrates small vertebrates including other frogs are consumed.

Lifespan: Males 1 to 3 years, females to 5+ years.

How long in the USA: First recorded on the Florida Keys in 1930s.

Native to: Cuba, Bahamas, Cayman and other Caribbean Islands.

Current Range in USA as of 2021: Currently expanding, now throughout most of Florida, occasionally reported from southern Georgia. May be unexpectedly carried to more distant area in plant shipments.

Habitat: Many and varied, but often most common near human habitations. Plant nurseries, ponds, puddles, irrigated areas, illuminated areas to which insects (and other frogs) are drawn.

Comments: The presence and spread of the Cuban Treefrog in Florida has created at least two very different biological outlooks. One viewpoint, based as much on this frog’s cannibalistic propensities as on any thing else dictates that each-and-every-one found be humanely euthanized. The argument is that Cuban Treefrogs deplete populations of our native hylids, in some cases to the point of localized extirpation. To this I respond that on the southern peninsula, where the Cuban Treefrogs have been present for most of their 90 years, I can still find native species without looking too hard.

The opposite viewpoint is that this species has been in FL for 90 years and its presence should now be ignored allowing Mother Nature to work things out. Sadly, in those early years this frog’s presence on the Keys was ignored. But then, so was the presence of virtually every other non-human ignored.

Do Cuban Treefrogs belong in the USA? The answer is a resounding and unequivocal “no.” But perhaps they are not quite as devastating as so often portrayed.