Multi legged tadpole... ?

Question

Several weeks ago I caught some tadpoles from a local pond that has an abundance of tadpoles and huge toads & frogs. We put the bigger ones in my mom's pond and they thrived (then turned into frogs) and we kept two small ones in our fish tank... mostly because one was almost completely white and so he wouldn't be lonely we got caught a little dark one. (Naming them Yin and Yang). To our amazement they thrived and now the bigger darker one started growing legs. So knowing that they need to be able to get on land or die I was setting up a frog friendly 10 gal and was checking out my darker frog and notice... no joke... FOUR LEGS!!! The best way to describe it is... it looks like a little frog swam up the tadpoles butt and all you can see are two little legs between two, small but bigger legs I noticed two days ago. The legs are about as long as my index fingernail and the small ones a few mm's shorter. From what I saw it looks like the two bigger ones work like legs and the others sort of float there but it is hard to tell. He is using some leg power. Either way it is freaky as h**l. The lighter one has little leg nubs that seem to be growing fine. He hasn't grown as fast as the other and seems perfectly healthy thus far.

Long story short... I don't know what is going on with my tadpole and what I should do with him. I don't wanna just kill him or flush him because he is mutant. I just don't know what is wrong or if it is going to kill him anyways.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

I would wait and see what happens.  Maybe take some pictures as he morphs into a frog.  There have been a lot of stories in the media in the last year or two about deformities in frogs and that might be what you are looking at.  There are several theories as to why and there are several studies going on.  You might even want to contact one of these research groups.

Here's a page with pictures of some of the abnormalities.

http://www.fws.gov/contaminants/Amphibia...

Answer 2

This is normal, as tadpoles turn into frogs. they are developing and need some land areas to get out of the water if they wish, and when they are ready. if you need to get rid of them, let them go where you found them.