Reptile & Amphibian Forums

It is very possible that this is a stupid question that no one can really answer.
In at least (I'd estimate) 75-80% of the internet sites I've checked says it's ok to feed mice. Why did people from the start begin to feed mice to frogs? And why has it become so big?
I guess no one could possibly know exactly...Any guesses?
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CokeOfMan

Hmm...I personally think (and someone mentioned this before) that SOME people seem to "get off" on feeding their frogs mice. It's like a shock factor to SOME people--"whoa, my frog just ate a mouse...not some boring little insect." It's like feeding a reticulated python a little kid..hahaha jk.

If you ever watch nature shows, they have shown mice being eaten by frogs and toads in the wild and in captivity. Then again, you never know if that was staged or not. And if one herper fed his frogs rodents and saw the frog getting fat, live for only a couple of years, YET is satisfied, then that kind of diet knowledge can be easily passed to others.

What comes down is that they CAN eat rodents, but if we assume a rodent diet is BAD, then supplementing with something bad is not the greatest idea. I can supplement my body with beer and smokes but if we assume that's bad (empty calories), then why do it? The animal has NO control over what you feed it in captivity. I guess some people believe that whatever doesn't kill you can make you stronger. If we really wanted to give frogs a varied diet, we can be so much more creative...why not stuff an earthworm full of vegetables, wrap a cricket with seaweed, inject a roach with caviar and hand it to the frog,..hey, it's varied but i certainly wouldn't recommend it. I think posts that bash on rodent diets are serve to be just warnings...because we gotta admit, a lotta people tend to overdose once the habit of feeding rodents kicks in. Just my 2 cents.

>>Hmm...I personally think (and someone mentioned this before) that SOME people seem to "get off" on feeding their frogs mice. It's like a shock factor to SOME people--"whoa, my frog just ate a mouse...not some boring little insect." It's like feeding a reticulated python a little kid..hahaha jk.
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>>If you ever watch nature shows, they have shown mice being eaten by frogs and toads in the wild and in captivity. Then again, you never know if that was staged or not. And if one herper fed his frogs rodents and saw the frog getting fat, live for only a couple of years, YET is satisfied, then that kind of diet knowledge can be easily passed to others.
>>
>>What comes down is that they CAN eat rodents, but if we assume a rodent diet is BAD, then supplementing with something bad is not the greatest idea. I can supplement my body with beer and smokes but if we assume that's bad (empty calories), then why do it? The animal has NO control over what you feed it in captivity. I guess some people believe that whatever doesn't kill you can make you stronger. If we really wanted to give frogs a varied diet, we can be so much more creative...why not stuff an earthworm full of vegetables, wrap a cricket with seaweed, inject a roach with caviar and hand it to the frog,..hey, it's varied but i certainly wouldn't recommend it. I think posts that bash on rodent diets are serve to be just warnings...because we gotta admit, a lotta people tend to overdose once the habit of feeding rodents kicks in. Just my 2 cents.
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Wildlife dies without a sound, the only voice it has is yours.

...the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it."
Aldo Leopold (1938)

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
Calvin and Hobbes (Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink', 1991)

How about lets get real creative. How about we conduct a little expiriment of our own and put you on a diet of Iceberg lettuce and multivitamins. The iceberg will hold over your stomach and the vitamins will give you everything else you need. Im sure that would go over well with you. Lets see if it works.

Thats pretty much what you do with your frog, feed it crickets and supplement with powdered vitamins. Why not give it real food. There is nothing wrong with it if you do it responsibly. Yes, I agree that there are people who may overdue the idea but that does not mean that the idea as a whole is wrong.

I like your little analogy as well, which also helps to serve my point so thank you. It is a proven fact that alcohol in small daily amounts is good for your body.

Eh...bad comparison. You're saying I can live off iceberg lettuce and multivitamins but you KNOW I would not enjoy it very much. Are you vouching for enjoyment in frogs? Can you really tell me they look happier eating mice than multi-vitamin-powdered crickets, roaches, and worms? When you make your frog smile, let me know.

And I was waiting for you to say a little bit of alcohol is good for you. Since i told you ASSUMING alcohol was BAD for you, you wouldn't supplement it at all. Ok, let's forget alcohol. How about drinking a little strychnine from time to time? If it doesn't kill you the first time, it must be making you stronger rite? I don't think so. I think we can agree that supplementing with something that's BAD is not a good idea. The fact that you said a little alcohol has proven to be good for your body simply means that you didn't accept my assumption that alcohol is bad. Now you just have to experimentally prove giving the occasional mouse (or 1 per month as some suggested) is good for an otherwise healthy, insect-eating frog.

You just stated that you wouldnt be happy eating just iceberg and multivitamins. I dont think that anybody would but I was aiming more towards the physical aspect because you wouldnt be eating a very balanced diet either. I wasnt stating that a NORMAL balanced diet would make my frog jump for joy and do the hula, I was just stating he would be just more healthy in the long run and thus a happier, yes happier frog. Sure you may survive because youre getting all your nutrients through the multivitamins but is just not the same as getting it through actual food sources in a NORMAL BALANCED DIET. If that was the case, then everyone would be going on a strictly multivitamin diet. Why dont they? Because its not as healthy as a normal balanced diet, fats and all.

You show me yours , I'll show you mine. You are making your objection under the assumption that mice are bad. You are ASSUMING mice are bad for frogs. Mice are not strychnine so there is no comparison. You show me a study where a invert diet supplemented with mice is bad, not a strictly all mouse diet which I beleive is the parameters of these studies you are basing your opinions off of. I am not arguing that an all mouse diet is good which I have stated many times. I agree that an all mouse diet would be bad but there is nothing wrong with supplementing an invert diet with mice. I have already shown a study that the breaking down of mice is not a problem for the frog. So again show me where mice as a SUPPLEMENT is as bad as strychnine? As for your last line, innocent until proven guilty, you show me where it is detrimental to your frogs health and not good for it. Then my friend you will have a complete apology for my total ignorance on the matter.

I had a pacman frog live close to 8 years and she ate mostly mice. The old school of thought it was an okay staple. I only fed her once a month, with a slight amount of vitamin dust. The problem mainly is a lack of exercise captivity tends to produce.

I'm not sure what the lifespan of pacman frogs are, but it did last 8 years. She loved mice--in fact that's all it was really interested in. I had them prekilled and frozen.

But now my current pacman eats nothing but crickets, and so does my bullfrog and all of them are doing quite well. Just curious to know how long these will live. So far my pacman is 4 years old and doing good. bullfrog is about 2 years old.

JadeFox

From what I know they live about 7-10 years normal.
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CokeOfMan

7 to 10 years? Wow-that is most comforting to hear. Mine was 8 years old and I cried and cried when it died, and I was blaming myself for the mostly mouse diet. But once a month only feeding.

I bet she could have lived another 2 or 3 years if I fed her right.

She was an unusual one. She never did take a liking to hibernation. But would just quit eating during the winter and resume in the spring. But otherwise go in and out of the water like it was everyday spring.

I have a pacman now and he just finished his hibernation...nearly 5 months of it! but he gets an all cricket and rare superworm now and then

JadeFox

Sigh...,
In general, the problem with a diet of solely mice in captivity is that the most commonly used feeder mice are unbalanced and are usually overly fat and have an excess of vitamin A stored in the fat bodies. The excess fat can result in obesity, and some species corneal lipidposis (although I have not seen this in horned frogs just hylids (which were never fed mice) and american bullfrogs). Crickets and mealworms are also high in cholesterol and can result in corneal lipidosis or elevated bloodlevels of cholesterol. Most of the time, adult horned frogs are grossly over fed, with food often offered weekly or even more frequently when a once a month feeding is often sufficient. Horned frogs in the wild are documented to feed on vertebrates to the point that the majority of the diet (by volume and if I remember correctly by weight) is taken up by vertebrates. C. ornata often lays in wait along rodent trails and if a meal is not forthcoming moves along the trail to another location to lay in wait for prey.

The problem with an excess of vitamin A is that it can lead to secondary hyperparathyroidism which is one of the several items that causes "MBD" in reptiles and amphibians. The excess vitamin A comes from the commercial rodent diets because rodents have a high tolerance to vitamin A the manufacturers add a lot of vitamin A to the pellets.
I also have kept multiple horned frogs for at least eight years on a diet of nothing but rodents. I just supplemented D3 to the mice to deal with the vitamin A issue.

Ed

I'm glad to hear you too had pacmans for 8 year span with an all rodent diet. I too supplement with D3 because I do not put my frogs outside at all and there is no UV light. They do very well with just D3 supplements here and there.

And yes I only fed my pacman monthly (and during the winter she would stop eating entirely for about 5 months).

But to be on the safe side I'm just doing crickets and occasional superworm now. feeding it more frequently though

JadeFox

Cholesterol is stored in fat, and crickets are low in fat. Mealworms, however, are high in fat.

You stated: "Crickets and mealworms are also high in cholesterol and can result in corneal lipidosis or elevated bloodlevels of cholesterol"

It is now the general consensus among reptile authorities to feed the frogs a low fat diet (insects, e.g., crickets) and avoid the mice entirely. I agree with this assessment.

I doubt a pacman can catch a mammal at a regular basis. Mice are very fast, and very smart. Most likely their staple is mostly insects...and other frogs

JadeFox

Please cite your reptile authorities. As this is not born out in the literature, the required diet for crickets nor their subsequent analyzed content.

House crickets contain 54% fat/kcal*, while commercial crickets contain 44% fat/kcal*, compared to 60% fat/kcal* for mealworms. This is only an average of 20% difference from mealworms. So the claim that crickets are low in cholesterol because they are low in fat is wrong. (citation below)

* Donoghue, Susan; Langenberg, Julie, 1996, Nutrition, In Reptile Medicine and Surgery, edited by Mader, Douglas R., W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia

As for the wild diet please refer to Basso, N. G. and J. D. Williams. 1989. The diet of Ceratophrys ornata (Anura: Ceratophryidae) in Argentina. 1st World Congr. Herpetol. Canterbury.
Well over 90% of the stomach contents of horned frogs were vertebrates, including rodents, a few birds and some frogs. They are documented to be well able to capture and consume rodents.

Any other unsubstantiated claims?

Ed

For my part, I only wish to say this. I personally had a frog die from being fed mainly mice. Since no real studies have been done that prove a definitive amount of mice that can be safely fed, and will not cause MBD and lipid-buildup in the eyes, why chance it? No one knows the specific point when mouse-feeding stops being harmless and starts becoming harmful to a horned frog in captivity.
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And humans are supposed to be the world's most intelligent, civilized, and refined species, eh? Have you ever been in a crowded discount store?