Victoria Heuer
If you’ve ever eaten more than you had planned at the dinner table and felt like you were about to burst, you’ll know how this frog felt right before it died.
In a paper published in the June 2015 issue of the journal Nature, titled “A frog in your throat: micro-CT images of anuran prey, Ceratophrys ornata,” Salamandra – German Journal of HerpetologyDr. Thomas Kleinteich of the Institute of Zoology at the University of Kiel in Germany has discovered that the Argentine horned frog (scientific name: Ceratophrys ornateUse micro-CT images.
Commonly known as the “Pac-Man” frog, Ceratophrys Pac-Man has the advantage of being able to open its mouth wide and swallow its prey whole, fitting it into its belly, which makes up most of its body weight, hence the nickname Pac-Man.
They also have the advantage of perseverance. Ceratophrys As opposed to animals that tail and chase their prey, they are “ambush” predators, sitting motionless and hidden until their prey is close enough for them to ambush them.
Like other frogs, Ceratophrys The group is carnivorous. However, while the smaller frogs generally eat insects, spiders, and small crabs, these larger frogs Ceratophrys Frogs have large mouths and bellies, which allows them to eat larger animals such as snakes, rodents, lizards, and even other types of frogs.
In this case, the female horned frog has eyes larger than her belly. Lithobates pipiensThe northern leopard frog, or rhinoceros vertebrate, was found headfirst in the stomach of the horned frog. Its left leg was still protruding from the horned frog’s esophagus, and its foot was resting on the tongue. The leopard frog was measured to be more than half the size of the horned frog, and the cause of death of the horned frog is presumed to be an obstruction of the airway.
Image credit: Dr. Thomas Kleintaich, KieUniversity
The northern leopard frog lives in Canada and the United States, while the Argentine horned frog, as its name suggests, lives in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. The horned frog was donated to the Zoological Museum of Hamburg in Germany and was in the museum’s collection, but there was no record of where it came from or how two frogs from different parts of the world ended up in the same environment. It is assumed that the two were kept together in captivity.
sauce: Salamandra – German Journal of HerpetologyNo. 51, June 2015
Main Image: Alexei Stemmer / Shutterstock
