How Blind Frog Ranch Got Its Name

The amphibians that gave Blind Frog Ranch its name have cameos here and there on Discovery’s reality series, and the Ollingers sometimes take the frogs as a sign they’re on the right track (via YouTube). It’s unclear whether the new crops of frogs are blind like the ones in the ranch’s founding story — and that tale may not hold up to much scrutiny. While it is true that many frog species spend some time underground or in caves, no known frog species spends its entire life away from the sun (per a 2013 study published in Subterranean Biology). If the frogs the Ollingers encountered on the day of their story really were blind, it likely wasn’t because they had never encountered sunlight.

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Any visitors to Blind Frog Ranch looking to spot the place’s namesake, blind or otherwise, will have more than one type of frog to watch out for. According to Wild About Utah, the most abundant species of frog in the state is the western chorus frog, though it and other native species like the northern leopard frog are struggling due to the introduction of American bullfrogs west of the Rocky Mountains. Bullfrogs are such aggressive and voracious eaters that other species are unable to compete for resources. Utah is also the northern limit of the range of the spadefoot frog (per Utah Division of Wildlife Resources).