Frog Pus...??

[Herpvet]

Can anyone confirm this info?



From this website: Frog Lumps

This got me to thinking about Shirley's weird problem where she passed chunks of white stuff in that bloody muscousy matter... have been assuming it could be ova, but after reading this I'm wondering. She was, and still is, seeming to be perfectly normal (for her, given her head tilt) and not sick in any way though, so??? First time I ever heard about frogs having "chunky white" pus... Ew.

Yes amphibian pus (like reptile pus) is usually relatively solid, believed to be because the digestive enzymes in the white blood cells don't tend to break up/liquefy the pus . It's not impossible for an amphibian to have liquid pus, but it's generally bad news because it's the bacteria that's liquefying things, which means it's pretty nasty.

In your frog's case it's possible pus was coming out - if for example there as infection in the uterus pus could be expelled (the pus might include degenerate eggs in that case). If it came from the gut it's much less likely to be pus though. (Please note I'm using the term uterus for simplicity - there are different opinions over whether it can be used in a valid sense in amphibians, but it is used in many textbooks).

Hope this helps,

Bruce.