Cricket digestion

[daziladi]

Seems to be an odd question but since I'm feeding only 1x a week just curious what happens after they eat 5 or 6 crickets at a time. Are the crickets still alive after the frog ingests, for how long? (eww!) How are they digested? Since the frog doesn't have teeth, I'm not understanding how the crickets are processed. Yesterday he ate 5 crickets in 15 minutes... how many crickets is too many?

[Kurt]

Crickets die with in a few moments. Stomach acids do most of the work, digesting everything except for exoskeletons and fur. A lot of frogs do have teeth. Here's a few pictures from Skulls Unlimited. The first one does show that some frogs have teeth, they are just really small. The skulls belong to Conraua goliath and Ceratophrys cornuta. The next one is a picture of a Litoria caerulea skeleton.

[daziladi]

Glad to know the crickets aren't in there bouncing around his insides or suffering too much. Humans eat things that are already dead, just couldn't wrap my mind around it, lol. I have a frog skeleton upstairs, will look to see what family its from. Interesting, thanks for explaining!

[Kurt]

You're welcome.

[hyla]

Sometimes mine will miss her target, but touch the cricket with her tongue just a little. The saliva must be powerful alone b/c the cricket will just kinda be rendered useless and doesnt move so well afterwards. I wish there were a better staple b/c I have come to really hate crickets and all their biting, smelly, dirty, escape artist ways.

[Ebony]

Sometimes mine will miss her target, but touch the cricket with her tongue just a little. The saliva must be powerful alone b/c the cricket will just kinda be rendered useless and doesn't move so well afterwards. I wish there were a better staple b/c I have come to really hate crickets and all their biting, smelly, dirty, escape artist ways.

I know what you mean Kristy, You should try Locust's if you are able to get them where you are. They don't smell and they range in sizes to suit small and large frogs. They are a little dippy so are bad escape artists. They also don't make a noise. I have them in my album if you want to cheek them out..

[Kurt]

Sometimes mine will miss her target, but touch the cricket with her tongue just a little. The saliva must be powerful alone b/c the cricket will just kinda be rendered useless and doesnt move so well afterwards.

Insects breath through spiracles, little pores in their exoskeletons that lead to its organs. The frog's saliva is probably blocking some of these spiracles, cutting off some of the insects air supply, so before the cricket can move again it needs to catch its breath.

[UncleChester]

Sometimes mine will miss her target, but touch the cricket with her tongue just a little. The saliva must be powerful alone b/c the cricket will just kinda be rendered useless and doesnt move so well afterwards. I wish there were a better staple b/c I have come to really hate crickets and all their biting, smelly, dirty, escape artist ways.

Frog slobber seems to be sticky too, maybe they are slimed? Also, they could be partially squished, imagine having an enormous frog land face first on your arm/leg/head/whatever. And partly drowning like Kurt mentioned... maybe a near miss is worse than just getting it over with. If the crickets were smart, they'd just jump into the frogs mouth.


As for the original post, the swallowing process doesn't look to gentle on the crickets either, I always figured they were pretty well squished between the tongue and the roof of the frog's mouth on the way down.

[Crystal6]

I have come to really hate crickets and all their biting, smelly, dirty, escape artist ways.

Your crickets BITE you? That's odd. I pick up mine with my bare hands every time I need to get out for feeding/cleaning the cage purposes and I've never been bitten. I thought they only used their mouths for food I guess.

[hyla]

Ebony, yes, I have literally watched a cricket bite my frogs leg. She jerked away immediately and thats only one reason why I remove them if she hasnt eaten them within a half hour or so. A second reason I remove them is because if I have a dish of waxworms in there for the frog, the crickets will chew them up as well. And finally the third reason I take them out is because they S**T everywhere!!! Maybe the joke is on me, and our pet store only carries evil mutant crickets, but this has been my experience.

[Kurt]

I have seen them chew up waxworms quite frequently.

Speaking of which, I produced my first waxworm! I had set up some cultures back in October of last year. I got two or three months per culture and nothing became of it. So in February I tried it again threw in more waxworms in to cultures that I believed to be dead. I got a few more moths this time, but eventually they died off too.
So here we are in April, I go to the Manchester Show and bought some waxworms that had not been refrigerated, hoping that these would actually lead some where. So two nights ago I finally got around to setting up completely new cultures.
I went to clear the shelf of the old ones so there would be room for the new ones. I started breaking down the old ones and thought I saw something move. So I took a little bit of the medium into the palm of my hand and a waxworm crawled out. It was an 1/8 of an inch long and I fed it to one of my Melanophryniscus stelzneri. Whoo hoo! Success!
Now the question is did come from the October moths or the February moths. I am think it had to be the latter.

[Crystal6]

I have seen them chew up waxworms quite frequently.

Speaking of which, I produced my first waxworm! I had set up some cultures back in October of last year. I got two or three months per culture and nothing became of it. So in February I tried it again threw in more waxworms in to cultures that I believed to be dead. I got a few more moths this time, but eventually they died off too.
So here we are in April, I go to the Manchester Show and bought some waxworms that had not been refrigerated, hoping that these would actually lead some where. So two nights ago I finally got around to setting up completely new cultures.
I went to clear the shelf of the old ones so there would be room for the new ones. I started breaking down the old ones and thought I saw something move. So I took a little bit of the medium into the palm of my hand and a waxworm crawled out. It was an 1/8 of an inch long and I fed it to one of my Melanophryniscus stelzneri. Whoo hoo! Success!
Now the question is did come from the October moths or the February moths. I am think it had to be the latter.

The first time I ever bred crickets the entire cricket population died off before any of the eggs hatched. It was weird because I was putting food into an empty cage for a week before I saw anything that was able to eat the food.

Anyways congratulations.

[Kurt]

Thanks. Went looking last night and found another. They are quite different then the ones you buy at the pet store in one way. They move faster and are more energetic. Maybe I can even get red-eyes to eat them.