Something for Future Waxy Monkey Tree Frog Owners to Consider

[Helios]

Hey Everyone,

So I had a sad happening with my Waxy, but my hope is that by posting this here maybe some of you who are looking into owning this awesome species might go into keeping them a little bit more informed. Let me preface this by saying I am not a herpotologist, nor a vet. Despite that I've done a lot a research through reading, and talked with a few herp experts that feel my suggestion might be very valid. Bascially my suggestion is that if you decide to own waxys, don't keep one by itself if it has been in a situation in which it was housed with others for any significant quantity of time. I have not found any scientific evidence for what I'm suggesting, so again I'm not claiming something definitive, this is just what I have concluded after my experience. If you do some digging, you'll find quite a few sources online that discuss waxys being social frogs. I am a firm believer that with any herp, the more closely you can simulate the natural conditions of a the original environment the healthier your animal will be, so I'd say it's at least logical to keep waxys in social groups, and really believe it's something they need to be healthy IF they've spent any time that way previously. If you happen to get a young frog that hasn't bonded to a social group maybe it's not an impact to their health if they're kept alone.

That said this was my experience: I bought a waxy back at the end of October who had been in a group of three. I wanted to get mroe than one and felt bad keeping him alone, but since mine was the last one at the store and it's a species that can be hard to find I wasn't able to =( To make a long story short, he started out doing well, with some periodic instances of some behaviors and apparent conditions that gave me pause. Overall though he snapped out of those instances looked good and had a great appetite until two weeks ago when he lost all interst in food/was no longer active at night and then died a couple days ago.
I spoke extensively with my vet (who is a herpitologist) and the owner of the rep shop I got the frog (which has a great reputation) quite a bit over the course of keeping him and a lot when he started to go down hill, and a few keepers on here. All of his essential needs were met, the conditions of his enclosure, lighting, food, vitamens, water, humidty, etc. were all what they should be. He had no signs of parasites or infection of any kind. In trying to save him, I did a full battery of treatments that just didn't take in the end =( which left me pretty baffled as to what went wrong.

So again, I realize there could have been another cause and am sure there are plenty of healthy waxys kept alone, but after talking more with some of the local experts I know I really think that ultimately his health went down-hill due to the stress of having been part of a social group and then being kept without any friends--which if that's the case leaves me feeling pretty sad. But anyways, the point of this post, like I said, is just ot suggest to someone thinking of keepign a waxy to keep at least one other especially if they've ever lived with others. I really believe it will be a big benefit to your frog's health, if not something totally essentail to it.

[Terrarium Supplies]

Helios so sorry for your loss. Losing a much loved animal, however small or large it may be is a hard pill to swallow. I'm sure your scenario is made ever so more poignant by not knowing the route of the cause.

Phyllomedusa Sauvagii are communal animals that do live amongst their own kind. In the wild (throughout the Gran Chaco ) they can often be seen basking in large numbers so this does indicate a certain level of dependency as part of a group.
We keep our Sauvagii in small numbered group - small being no more than 6 adults per unit. You will always get dominant female who takes the 'hot spot' however we do house individual juvs. The reason being so we can monitor their progress and ensure that each Sauvagii is getting the correct daily nutrition.

Can I ask... did you get a biopsy done by a qualified vet surgeon or an interventional 'herp' radiologist involving sampling of the cells or tissues? I'm not for one minute saying that your theory has no weight to it however one has to be clear when making open judgements that can be seen and read by thousands of potential new Phyllomedusa Sauvagii owners.

Here are some of our juvs that are housed on their own:



Captive care and management is about understanding a specie as much as possible. Without medical or scientific evidence to back up any claims is a black area. Costly it may be but without such material than we are simply stabbing in the dark.

[flybyferns]

Hi Helios,
I'm so sorry to hear of your loss as well. You worked very hard!

Michael Novy ( a member here). He has bred the waxy as well.
He may be able to help you .

Rainforest Junky's | Specializing in captive bred amphibians

I had a similar experience with a black eyed tree frog (A moreletii)
It lived ( w/ my red eyed tree frogs) for over 2 years.
I finally, caved to the constant questioning regarding mixing these two species, and built him his own enclosure.
What a mess. He just shut down/ was failing to thrive. Is was so sad. His behavior was so different after the move. He went down hill so quickly , he was so sick, I could not take the chance of putting him back with the red eyeds'. Seven weeks I force fed this poor frog. I nearly lost him a few times throughout this. My gut from the very beginning was the 'solitary' confinement. However, nothing is well documented about it. Fortunately, he survived this ordeal and is now happy and healthy living w/ 4 enclosure mates ! I took me over 6 months to teat several problems that developed (stress related) as a result of moving him and getting him healthy enough to move my 4 ( quarantined at the time) newly acquired froglets in with him.

It can be really rough sometimes.
I'm sure you are very upset after such a dedicated effort was made to help him I hope you keep trying ?
Best, Lynn

[Helios]

@Terrarium Supplies: Thanks, and thank you for pointing out that you do raise juveniles individually, which is somethign I think is essential for establishing any juveile frog or reptile for the reasons you cite. Yours look terrific and are obviously very healthy!
And I did not think to have a biopsy or necropsy done, in hindsight I should have. I agree with you completely, and that was my intent in trying to preface my thread with the fact that I am not a hepitologist or a vet. I also hope it is very clear I wouldn't want to discourage someone from keeping waxy. They are awesome frogs! My vet is a personal friend of one of the indiviudals who helped pioneer getting the chacoan waxy into the trade. Since I opened up a topic that yeah is pretty gray, I'll see if my vet can get anythign from him that might have some quantitative data to backup or refute what I'm saying.
I'll give a little more detail as to how my vet ruled things out. The first thing we checked for was an impaction, he did not have one. After he aclimated there was a period of time, like I mentioned, he seemed off. My vet and I discussed his behaviors and came to the conclusion that he needed some aspects of his enclosure reworked to include more hides. Things got back to normal for a while. Then there was a period of time he started to turn a little darker green and had urites were of a quality indicating he needed electrolytes. So, after an electrolyte soak things were looking up again. Then over time he started loosing enthusiasm for food and began behaving like Lynn is saying--he seemed stressed. I continued wiht a few more electolyte soaks, and made sure he was eating, but the quantity of food he was taking in dropped off. He was checked for MBD didn't have it, and parasites which he also did not have. He then got to the point he lost his bright green color altogether. I did not have him physically examined at this point for an infection due to not wanting to create further stress; however in light of his lacking a few other symptons the conclusion was that it was very unlikely there was anythign viral or microbial going on. It was a couple days after this he really went down hill and stopped eating altogether. I tried a few different things to try and entice his appetite, but it was just like he didn't care. He never turned brown, only dark green, which from what I have read and been told by experts was a sign of stress whereas turnign brown is a sign of infection. Not long before he died he even had an incomplete shed--not because of the humidity conditions etc., it was more like he just didn't clean himself off. I tried force-feeding, (which he then spit out or up every time) and then died the next day. In the whole time I owned him I only handled my frog twice and did so in the proper manner.
But again, I realize this is all just observational data, in terms of the final cause of death I don't have medical data to provide. And again, my intent isn't to discourage anyone from getting a waxy. But as Lynn said, the idea of isolation in species which are social causing stress to the point of death isn't a well documented idea, so some of my intent was just to say, "Hey this has been my experience, maybe it's something to think about and for others to voice in on if they've had similar experiences," with the hope that if this is a real consideration to take with some speices, maybe this topic could spark finding that out or moving toward that answer. And yeah if somone has a different theory as to why mine didn't make it I want that answer, but the experts who were involved in helping me try to save him indicated that they don't understand what happened. But anyways... I know you're not saying the social group theory isn't what happened, but yeah it's not definitive. And I myself am very scientifically inclined, so I agree that this is a gray area until you get conclusive data and not just observations or enough observations to amount to conclusive data. If a mod ultimately feels that this thread is something that doesn't best serve as useful information, I won't be offended if it's taken down.
Lynn: Thanks, =( it's discouraging to be left where I don't know for sure what happened, but in the end I'm glad he didn't linger a long time and know I did everything I could have/hope that my experience will be useful information for someone else in some way or other. I'm glad to hear yours made it through! I'll defintily be getting some waxys again, it will probably be a little while, but this experience defintily did not put me off to keepign them.

[Lija]

Helios I am so terribly sorry to hear this, so sad, you did everything there is out there for him, but sometimes they just die
i do believe the reason might be stress of being alone, since all other apparent reasons are out. I do however keep my female alone, because she is very dominant, has very big personality and even bigger ego, but boys are just on the other side of the glass. She always tries to sit close to that glass though.

I'm glad you posted your experience, and while it is quite bold to state that housed alone waxies will die without support of scientific data, but I do believe in practical experience and gut feeling, it is definitely something to consider for those who keep waxies and other social frogs. happy frog=healthy frog, for social frogs( or any other being for that matter) to be happy company of their own kind is needed. period! it is like with luck of UVB - before any other symptoms are visible they just starting to shut down. and when symptoms are visible they're just reflecting stress.

[Helios]

Thanks Lija, and thanks too for all your help and suggestions over the course of my owning mine. True, and I certainly didn't mean to suggest something as emphatic as if kept alone they will die. Every animal is unique. My intent was more just to provide as thorough of information here as I could with the suggestion that people interested in the speices consider or que in on if they're keeping solitary frogs that start to seem stressed or unhealthy for reasons which arent' apparent, if they are certain the envionrmental conditions and other factors are what they should be.

[Terrarium Supplies]

Hi Helios, there was no malicious intent in my reply to your original post. Just a general caution as we as keepers have so much more still to learn about animals in captivity. It is good that your brought your case to the public domain however we have to flip the coin and reveal both sides.

Based on my experience with sauvagii, they have many (vast!) amount of eggs. Going back to evolution, nature has its way. There are bound to be faults in the line, even when reaching adulthood. Just like us Humans, Cancers, Liver Disease, Heart Defects... the list goes on. This applies to all Animalia, Plantae and all living, breathing organisms.

To think that all animals put into captivity under the right conditions, fed the correct food source and generally doing everything right is one of the biggest misconceptions in our hobby. Sometimes nature just has its way and unless (I say this with utter sadness) your frog was stripped down and fully examined, we are simply left scratching our heads.

[Helios]

Oh totally, I know! I just thought I'd give more detail about the whole range of what we looked at with my frog, because I realized after my first post I hadn't been very thorough in describing the situation and I wanted to be clear about the fact that I knew I had no scientific ground to stand on minus the fact that they tend to live in social groups. I'm really interested in speices that are less extensively known, so hopefully discussions like this one can ultimately aid in the right people asking the right questions to get those answers. And I totally agree, there could have been something not quite right with my frog from the get go and had I been thinking I would have pursued having his remains examined.

[Terrarium Supplies]

I think it would be far to say that 'stress' is widely misinterpreted. In fact I would go as far to say that I do not like the term 'stress'. There is always an underplaying factor of which I believe and from my experience, is more often than not the route of the cause. 'Stress' is and always will be a general statement. It is very easy for one to say that 'stress' killed my pet. One has to questions exactly what 'stress' is?

I'm just glad this has not left a sour taste in your mouth. I would advise you to pick yourself up, then go out and get yourself a small group of CB sauvagii. Enjoy them, learn from them and keep moving forward, documenting your methods to empower your knowledge and of course to help others alike. I would be ecstatic if you came back in a few months with some juicy pics of your new brood!

Chin up Helios, lighting never strikes twice.

[Helios]

Very true, it's easy to label stress as the cause rather then identify it as a force (instinctual, emotional, or whatever the case may be), which triggers a biological response or as you said underlies one. Oh for sure, I look forward to owning waxys again--as soon as I have space for a tank suited to keeping three or four I'll be at it again!

[flybyferns]

Hi Helios and all that may stumble upon this long post,

Here’s my 2 cents on stress ( yes stress) on our wild caught and captive bred frogs. I would really like to spend more time on this ---but my regular ‘responsibilities” are calling me. This is based on my personal experiences. Here are a few , simple, day-to-day things I see – too often ! Having said that, there is so, so, much more that has an impact on why people may or may not be able to care for them properly; well beyond the scope of this, my post. It’s human nature!

What goes into keeping our frogs healthy and ‘stress’ free is “more than what meets the eye.”
One may go to a show, a pet sore, an expo, and buy a frog, having NEVER read one single piece of information regarding its care. “How hard could it be ? It’s just a frog. It’s only $ 6.99. Look !, they have 10 in that tank; I’ll get five. They will keep each other company. “ Then there is the purchase of the enclosure. Yikes $$$ Often, this ends up being the improper size and orientation.

Then, with the very best intentions, there are most of us that buy them and often think our good care will be the end to their struggles? We pour over care sheets and obsess with trying to make things perfect, because we love them. Sadly, the problem only starts here as many sold in the pet trade and expos are anything but healthy. How many time have we read on FF -of a respected member- losing a frog after trying so hard to keep it healthy !!!

Consider the massive amount of other variables that , sadly, lead to their demise.
Add to this list the massive amount of often conflicting information to do so properly! I’m sure I’ve left some out.
Below ....commonly found list of issues:
-Improperly maintained humidity levels
-Poorly or improperly kept water sources
-Improper temperatures
-Improper lighting (day/night cycles, UVA/B when required)
-Wrong choice of suitable and safe substrate (depth, type etc).
-Poor cleaning and disinfecting of the enclosure, substrate, and furnishings
-Inconsistent monitoring of equipment need to maintain the enclosure
-Improper maintenance and size of feeders
-The improper use of and lack of the use of calcium /nutritional supplements
-Irregular observation of the frog that leads to missing the detection and early signs of stress or (ill health) which delays prompt intervention.
-Lack of prompt intervention by a qualified herp vet.

Here are some ‘scientific ‘articles regard the effect of stress on the health of frogs. I spend an enormous amount of time researching how stress impacts the immune systems of frogs which leads to their ill health.

It’s quite easy to find this information. Often, it can be complicated. Try to enjoy it anyway ! Try to read through. Every time you might read a ‘scientific research article’ you will come away with having learned something new. It’s never wasted time ! If it’s not specific to the topic you intended, simply move on.

Stress in the wild: about the negative effect of temperature changes -article below
<One of the major questions in ecology is how environmental factors influence the dynamics of parasitism and disease in natural populations. A case in point is that environmental factors have been implicated in the emergence of new and more severe amphibian diseases>
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/p/...al_Ecology.pdf

Stress, over a frog’s lifespan , seems to hsve an impact on their immune system and their overall nutritional status as well. It's not clear how this effect of stress can may make them sick, however. We need to continue to support our passionate scientists! For example, like with humans, stress activates parts of the immune system can which cause inflammation in the body. “Inflammation in the body”; sounds simple, right! It’s not. This is not merely the inflammation ( or swelling) we see if we have an injury. It is related to an inflammatory process in the body that leads to diseases. In humans this would be major diseases like, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Good research articles:
ScienceDirect.com - Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology - Roles of stress hormones in food intake regulation in anuran amphibians throughout the life cycle

http://www.mcdb.lsa.umich.edu/labs/d.../CBP141381.pdf

In captivity, are frogs have to adjust to enormous obstacles from the day when they are born in captivity:

Neuroendocrine-immune system interactions in amphibians - Springer

Some others:
searched words <“Sources of stress in captive frogs “
Oh ! Thank goodness for the www.

ScienceDirect.com - Applied Animal Behaviour Science - Sources of stress in captivity

Here is a link to articles on stress, specifically, in captive amphibians… Complements of Google:

constant stress in captive amphibians - Google Scholar

Sorry for the lengthy post.
So, on the ‘other side of the coin’, Helios-Keep trying !!!!! Like you are planning to do !!!!!

I believe we should all keep trying, and, NEVER underestimate the important impact we ( non-scientists) have on the ongoing knowledge and proper husbandry of our captive friends ! We matter and WE can make a difference !

My mission: I leave the wild ones there and –try very hard - to give the captive bred frogs a great home !

My FF quote :
>But if you tame me,
then we shall meet each other.
To me, you will be unique in all the world.
To you , I shall be unique in all the world.
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.>

Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Little Prince" chapter 21

Lynn