Fearing that I too, got scammed. (Dwarf African Bullfrogs/Pyxies sold as Giants)

[Jeff Kennedy]

Apparently this is an all too familiar topic. I just stumbled across a topic on this forum that aroused some concern for me. I fell in love with the African Bullfrog a couple of months back. My first choice was to find an adult male for sale but this wasn't possible at the time. I really even had trouble finding babies or juvies for sale. I did find one. Advertised as a Giant Pyxie. The particular ones were being sold as 4 inch beauty's with a price tag of $129.95 (not including shipping). I contacted the place via telephone and a woman answered. I had questions about there frogs because I wanted to ensure that I was getting an actual Giant African bullfrog. She transferred me to a male subject who was very polite and seemed very well educated in the likes of these frogs. He informed me that he is one of the only distributors who get these and that they come from a private farm. He further advised me that they have moved like around 90 of these since March. I was told that without a doubt, mine was the giants and that the males would reach 10". I was also advised that I would be purchasing a male because they are the only ones with a yellow throat and that the farm only releases there males and that they keep the females for breeding. Part of this is my bad. I should have done more research as I now know, the yellow doesn't mean jack and that African's can't really be sexed for sure until they are a little bit older. What I didn't plan on encountering was that I might have possibly paid a premium price on something that isn't what it's suppose to be. I'm sick at my stomach over this. The place that I purchased from has been phenomonal to conduct buisness with for the most part and I have speant several hundreds of dollars with them over the past couple of weeks. Please provide some assistance if you can. My frog has alot of yellow on his throat and belly however the "orange under the armpits" that I have read is an indicator of a true "giant", is not under the arm but it is at the top of his front arms, where our shoulders would be.

[Deku]

I may be wrong. But that looks like a dwarf pixie to me. Just make sure when you ask next time, go by scientific name. TO be quite honest bro. Common name means jack. Because there are alot of confussion over the names. SO you should have just asked for scientific name. If it is an actuall giant pixie, then I guess you're okay. But if its not.... Thenn just return it and ask for full refund! if they refuse, go put em on a black list and warn several reptile sites. As several public sites see that these people are "Bad" they will stop buying fromt here, thus these people will then take into consideration their ethics.

[John]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for posting. This frog has a somewhat intermediate appearance (which just bears out what I say in the updated care article) but that second last photo tells me it's not a "Giant". There are no guarantees but let's put it this way, I wouldn't buy that frog if I were looking for a "Giant". I rather suspect that the reason the frog is 4" is because this is an adult of whatever variant it is and all the wild caught frogs that have come in lately are like this (there is only one place I know of that "farms" Pyxies in Africa and it does not produce frogs like yours).

LLLReptiles posted on here recently, what I think is rather on the point, that whoever is exporting these from Africa is labeling them as Giants because 99% of people want Giants, not the small variants.

I've been so sick of what's appearing for sale lately that I decided to take photos off kingsnake.com just to show you what people falsely selling as giants.

This is not a Giant African Bullfrog:




Pet Life Forms, this is not a Giant African Bullfrog:


Exotic Pets does not make clear in their ads that this is not a Giant African Bullfrog:




Worst of all is Big Apple Herp, who use this image of a Giant African Bullfrog froglet to sell the same non-giant animals as the folks just mentioned, according to several Big Apple customers who have posted photos of their animals recently on this web site:


Continued in next post.

[John]

Kudos to Mark Lucas for selling these non-giant animals under the correct name from the get-go:


And while LLLReptile had some issues a month or so ago because people were receiving obviously non-giants that were sold as giants, they did change their spec to reflect the origin of the animal as non-giant:


Kudos to Leonard at Salty City for selling these non-giant animals under the correct name:


Kudos to Switzer Reptiles for selling these non-giant animals under the correct name:

[Kurt]

Seems to me that a lot of vendors cannot tell one Pyxicephalus from another. So their supppliers can easily screw them over. Are any these vendors that are selling mislabled Pyxicephalus frogs frog-specialists or are they predominately snake/lizard vendors, that also happen to sell the odd frog or two?

[Deku]

Seems to me that a lot of vendors cannot tell one Pyxicephalus from another. So their supppliers can easily screw them over. Are any these vendors that are selling mislabled Pyxicephalus frogs frog-specialists or are they predominately snake/lizard vendors, that also happen to sell the odd frog or two?

Most vendors Ived come across that have these frogs also supply snakes and lizards. Some even supply turtles. Big apple herps is a place I generally wouldnt trust. I keep hearing stuff about them about their pixies sooo. Yeah. Thing is, I think they know that they're selling dwarves. But they dont care.

[Jeff Kennedy]

This is truly disheartening. The main frog that I wanted was a "true"giant. Can anybody please direct me somewhere where I can find one of these? This is a terrible start to the day. I actually did purchase this one through Big Apple. I have purchased several other frogs from them as well and was actually going to make a purchase tomorrow as well. Not sure what to do at this point. I'm sure my original purchase is non-refundable and they are not willing to take it back. It sucks though because with shipping, I paid close to $170 for this guy.