THE green tree frog, with the white lip, that I fed last night is currently asleep outside my kitchen window.
Last night she – I call her Emily – ate four grasshoppers, two moths, one bush cockroach, one click-beetle, but refused the squirming earthworm I held out for her.
I understand it is easy to overfed a frog.
There are lots of grasshoppers in my veggie garden at the moment which I can easily collect during the day and keep alive in a container for Emily when she wakes up around 7pm. But, how many should I feed her each night?
And please, spare me the response from the public servants – who for mostly just sitting on their bums each day get money regularly fed into their Sydney bank accounts – that Emily should actually go hunting for her own food in the wilds of the adjacent nature reserve.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
feed her as many as she can eat. Wild animals don’t tend to over eat.
Jennifer that’s a really nice question and brings back memories of my childhood; I grew up on the banks of the Paroo River (yes that river which has recently been declared a ‘wild river’ by the ‘keen to regulate anything’ Government); our house which was about 50 metres from the river was a favourite recluse by green frogs (I don’t recall them having a white lip); their favourite place to live in the house was underneath the toilet lip and everytime the toilet was flushed they would fall into the loo and then climb back into the lip; what I recall as a child was how territorial they were; for example one lived under the lamp in the spare room which was used for entertaining which didn’t happen much; I tied a string around its leg and took it down to the river one day and two days it was back with the string under the lamp; my recollection is that the frogs were awake at night and they ate insects at night; mainly mozzies and moths at night – at least the ones in the house; I don’t know what the others ate – but my feeling is from what I know of those frogs is that the amount you’re feeding Emily is too much; but thanks for telling us that story and probably someone much more expert can tell you; but John’s advice is good; most wild animals won’t eat more than they need
They’re not yet in the numbers they used to be but at least it’s not down to AGW like they tried to tell us.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827903.500-fungus-out-the-frog-resistance-is-here.html
Thanks for sharing Val. 🙂
How do you know it’s a she?
Here’s how to tell if you’ve over-fed a frog;
If she croaks, you’ve over-fed her 🙂
Having kept a few as a hobbyist herp, I can say that you are over feeding. But ‘she’ does not mind at all……
Wow that does remind of the trip down the back river to gather tadpoles and watch them grow! i must say we never graduated into the stage of monitoring the food! Excellent.