Well, sort of. Part of the reason scientists are so concerned about this whole frog disappearance thing is that amphibians are extremely sensitive to environmental changes. They spend their lives both on land and in the water. Their skin is thin and delicate, and to a significant degree, they breathe and drink through it, so all kinds of things can get in through it (unlike human skin, which is designed to keep stuff out). Amphibian eggs have no shells, and thus are directly exposed to dirt, sunlight and water. They tend to stay in the areas where they were born, and don’t move around much through the course of their life. And there are so many different kinds of amphibians that significant changes in their health as a group are usually not due to a specific characteristic of their class, and are more likely to an environmental issue, especially in a die-off on such a scale as this.
Several generations ago, human miners used canaries to detect dangerous gases trapped underground. They’d take a canary down into the mine shaft with them, and the canary, being more sensitive to the toxic gases, would usually die first. So if your canary died, that was a pretty good sign to get the heck out of there. Scientists think that amphibians can be used in much the same way. Because they’re so sensitive to so many different aspects of their environment, any significant change in their general health and well-being probably indicates a problem for humans down the road. We just aren’t sensitive enough to it—yet. So basically, our canary is dying, and we need to get out of the mineshaft or fix the problem.