The art of hunting a cricket

[Gnag the nameless]

This is all quite interesting. Thanks for the replies.

It's always irritating when the crickets sit still, then jump far out so my frogs have difficulty catching them. Well, Gnag does, anyways. She prefers to quietly [and slowly] creep up on crickets as I described earlier. Bumpy's the ninja of the tank. She's the chaser of the pair and she can hop amazingly far for such a small frog, and she will NEVER give up once she's locked on. In militaristic perspectives, Bumpy's the jet, Gnag's the helicopter. Except Gnag packs more firepower she's much bigger, and damn, she eats more. Bumpy tends to take a couple of crickets and be done with it. Gnag will eat as many as she can get.

Lol! I love the pictures of your treefrogs, Brian.

My frogs often detect a swimming cricket by small vibrations in the water. I know this, because the more mini-waves in the water there are, the faster my frogs come out of hiding.

[yoshimi]

i read this, laughed at those pics, then looked in on my american toad and his pointy little butt was up in the air, all but one leg in food dish, going after the last of the few tiny crickets i managed to wrangle earlier. i was trying to get them into bowl then transfer into powder for a shake-up, but he got to most of them 1st. he's a hilarious and skilled little hunter. sadly, i'm not, and at least 2 are roaming around my kitchen somewhere right now, lost when i tried a different method to get some shaken up. hoping they'll wind up in the cat water or a cat's belly, sooner rather than later. i'm out of practice with crickets, prefer food that more or less stays put, but i think he enjoys the in-tank escapees. i've read that toads generally sit and wait for food to walk by, but he goes crawling after them. or if one wanders near his burrow, i hear the *snap* of the tongue from under plant. love the enthusiasm, but not the dirt he eats along with bug. :/
regardless of where the food is, my favorite thing is the way his little head whips around to stare at it when he 1st sees it. no neck, so it's ridiculously cute to watch. i'd imagine much less adorable for the bug. (i actually imagine this quite often. gruesome.)