Quote Originally Posted by Mentat View Post
I've first heard of the term "Sudden Death Syndrome" (SDS) in relation to large Central American cichlid hybrids. Sometimes when you mix and match different species, the same unfavorable gene combination safeguards that keep species true will prevent successful hybridizing. Those "bad genes" or "deadly genes" will sometimes allow gestation and birth to happen; but will trigger death on an apparent healthy individual at some young stage in it's life. To me, it makes more sense the use of SDS in those cases, such as with unstable "Green Apple" Pacman hybrids. Maybe it's just a case of semantics; but will try to explain my point.

Internal organs on young organisms work usually fine, unless they don't. Today's incredible advances in human medicine show that many "sudden death" of the past are attributable to Heart or neurological issues. In those cases the organisms (humans) did not die a sudden death; they died because of a life threatening health issue.

Pet medicine has made great advances, but when it comes to frogs, we are still struggling along. Our frogs can die of acute Heart or neurological issues, same as we can. And when they sadly do; we can't say they were healthy. Unless in a research labs, no frogs get echocardiograms to check their Hearts or circulatory system and they do not get MRI's to check out their brain functions either. And even when conducting a necropsy; a veterinary could miss some stroke or cardiac symptoms.

When an apparently healthy frog suddenly dies, it's not SDS, it was unhealthy and we just did not knew it !
I never said you were wrong. There is more to SDS than just Hybrids because they are not the only animals that suffer from this. In truth this occurence being labled as a "Syndrome" which usually refers to a disease is being misused and essentially incorrect. People die of heart failure in which the heart stops beating, but no actual damage has occurred and the body basically asphyxiates from lack of oxygenated blood but with no way to explain why the heart stopped.

You cannot say nor can I that a healthy animal will not suddenly drop dead. It happens all the time. Every frog that Ive lost the necropsy showed a conclusive cause of death and if bad genes are the problem then it will physically manifest itself. Hense why Green Apples show physical signs of being unstable and a necropsy can show what caused them to die or fail to thrive. Organs will show damage or distress and human error is always a possibility, but to happen enough times to actually cause a new disorder to be created is a little far fetched. There are still many things about these animals and ourselves that still cannot be explained. This is why we come up with disorders like SDS so that we can try and put a name to something we cannot fully understand.