Cuban Tree Frog - Protruding Organs

[John]

This is called a prolapse. The diagnosis for one this bad is very bleak - that frog is a dead frog hopping. A vet may be able to push the prolapsed tissue back inside the frog but even then it's unlikely the frog will make it. I would not attempt it yourself.

[dinofsilence]

Just took another look at him after posting and noticed the red bulge had enlarged and fecal matter and a few small white objects - disc-shaped and about the size of a large grain of sand - visible through the membrane. I located a resource that suggested soaking the frog in a lukewarm bath of clean dechlorinated water mixed with sugar to leech out fluids. He's now been soaking for about 20-25 minutes and the swelling has gone down significantly! There is still about 1/4 of an inch of organ sticking out, but I hope the problem will resolve itself.

Thank you for your post, John - I could have kicked myself when I read your response. I took a class on reptiles/amphibians and you'd never know to talk to me - I forgot just about everything, but I should definitely have remembered that term.

I am fully aware he may take a turn for the worse, but I'm still hopeful ;)

[Kerry1968]

Any news on the tree frog?

[dinofsilence]

I took him in to the vet the next morning. The prolapse had worsened again overnight. The vet examined him while I was at work..he left a message on the answering machine saying that the problem would have been rectified by the warm water bath, but he continued to strain to defecate. Apparently he had ingested another frog that was too large to digest properly, and was passing undigested bits. The vet euthanized him for me.

[John]

A sad end. There are plenty more though where that one came from.

[Endosymbiote]

It's surprising to me that the "I ate too much so I died" issue is a problem in the wild. You'd think natural selection would have taught frogs over the course of millions of years what is the safe size of a meal. The costs of evolving a neural 'measuring stick' can't be THAT great, given that all frogs do it to some extent...

[John]

Well aside from the fact that this happens, Cuban Tree Frogs are not native to Florida so they may have attentional "learning" to do.