Comments

  1. RahXephon231 says

    This may be a stupid question, but in my defense I did get sick during the frog dissection in middle school: do frogs have any kind of teeth or anything there they can bite you with? He acted like it really hurt, after all.

  2. EvoMonkey says

    Is this some kind of top secret DoD research project to make man eating frogs?
    Don’t they know, they need to use radioactive frogs?

  3. Rumtopf says

    @7 These frogs do have teeth, pointy sharp ones right in the front. Or well, not sure if they’re teeth, they might be bony ridges? TO THE INTERNETS!

  4. says

    To answer the question, yes. This species has teeth. Or rather, they have projections from the vomer and dentary bones on the upper and lower jaws respectively, in addition to pedicilate teeth on the maxilla. These can draw blood in humans, and that particular animal is relatively small. They get to be larger than dinner plates and capable of eating rats.

  5. leighshryock says

    All in all, I’m sure it smarted. There’s a bit of force there.

    This is a young/small specimen, though. They, can, as said above, eat rats when larger.

  6. 'Tis Himself, OM. says

    The frog is thinking, “If you want to play silly games then we can play silly games.”

    </anthropomorphize>

  7. GodotIsWaiting4U says

    @benjaminallen Don’t they also try to eat anything they can fit their mouth around, and don’t they also refuse to let go of anything ever? I seem to recall stories of them choking to death because they wouldn’t let go of something too big to eat.

  8. says

    I recall once that my Argentinean Horned frog, a similarly configured frog to the Pyxicephalus, after biting my foolish finger that was trying to get its goldfish up where it could better see it, doggedly hung on. It even, as I was trying to shake it off so I wouldn’t hurt it, tried to gulp more of my finger. That’s when I was able to pull my finger back to safety. Lucky for me, because I don’t think it would have stopped at just one finger.

  9. says

    How far down the evolutionary scale can we go and still find creatures that don’t like to be tormented?

    I dunno. Michele Bachmann?

  10. kingbollock says

    I used to keep an Argentinian Horned Frog, which, as has been mentioned, is similar. I remember reading that if they weren’t cannibalistic that there would be no other animals, up to their size, living in the Frog’s natural habitat.

    They are incredibly cool. I would love to own an actual Pacman Frog, though it might well end up owning me!

  11. hillaryrettig says

    Kingbollock and other frog fanciers – do you think the frog bit him because he was PO’d, or was it just a reflexive grab at a moving thing? (Or both?)

  12. Amphiox says

    How far down the evolutionary scale can we go and still find creatures that don’t like to be tormented?

    Tough to answer that one, seeing as there is no such thing as an evolutionary scale upon which one can go up or down to find creatures.

  13. David Marjanović says

    How far down the evolutionary scale

    What do you mean? How far away from humans on the tree? Any particular brain architecture? Please explain.

  14. says

    When I said “How far down the evolutionary scale…” I meant, How far down the evolutionary tree of life (toward more simple, primitive creatures) can we go and still find creatures that don’t like to be tormented?
    The frog may or may not have felt tormented. It maybe just saw something more appetizing.
    I do think animals, especially pets like dogs, can sense if they are being tormented.