A VORACIOUS FROG.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1154, 29 September 1883, Page 3

A VORACIOUS FROG.

A correspondent writes to the American Naturalist ‘ A rather interesting Incident occurred while I was a student in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College. In the Peabody Museum we had a largo wire cage containing numerous reptiles, and amongst these wasiL'frng of unusual size. After one of -my excursions I brought in a number of frogs and other animals, and going to the cage dropped the contents of the jar, frogs and all, down among the animals at the bottom. The large frog which had been confined there for sometime, caught one of the small ones before it reached the bottom of the cage, and swallowed it with as great ease as he would have captured a fly. This quickly done, he aaf, and l»oUod about with an air of satisfaction for a moment, then sprang upon another of medium size, caught and swallowed it as quickly as the first, This done, there was another pause of a couple of minutes, and then with another quick bound be seized and swallowed a third frog, equal in size to the second ; this accomplished, there was another pause of about five minutes, and then another quick, savage bound for a fourth victim, this time for a frog two-thirds the size of himself. Each ; of the three were seized and swallowed head first, but the fourth effort was not so successful as the others, for this he only managed to get in his mouth as far as its nind legs, when there was a pause and a straggle. The unfortunate frog in the mouth of tqe large one persisted in holding its hind legs out sideways, at right angles to its body, as if conscious that these tactics would pre-, vent the other from swallowing it; and at the same time the large one used its front feet, at times one, and again both, to straighten out the hind legs of his victim, so that he might bo able to, swallow ; and while this struggle was going on, he made frequent efforts to use the sides and bottom of the cage as an object against which to proas the other frog, so as to aid his efforts to swallow it, The struggle, however, after lasting a number of minutes, terminated in favor of the smaller frog, for by desperate efforts it managed to elude the grasp of its assailant ; but while the battle did last it used both its muscular and vocal powers to their utmost to thwart the murderous designs of its enemy.*