Mouse eating live frog

wellies101 · #1 (**permalink**) 04-02-2009, 08:36 PM

Hi All

Now I haven't gone mad and the thread title is true. During the cold weather, a colleage of mine (I work as a ranger in a country park) saw spots of blood on the snow. He followed the spots until he came across what looked like a wounded frog.

He was right, the frog had an open wound on the back of one of its legs. Now, he stood watching it for a few minutes and noticed a mouse, yes mouse, running out and biting the back of the frog. This wasn't in defence, it was feeding off a live frog, which was quite a bit bigger than it.

Now this wasn't a rat, we know the difference, I would guess at wood mouse. Has anyone EVER heard of anything like this happening before?

James

galanthus · #2 (**permalink**) 04-02-2009, 08:40 PM

Good grief

Never heard of it. Just googled it but nothing of use came up. How strange a vision is that

wellies101 · #3 (**permalink**) 04-02-2009, 08:44 PM

I know, crazy. I thought they ate seeds and insects at the most! Could the weather have pushed it to an extreme perhaps?

galanthus · #4 (**permalink**) 04-02-2009, 08:52 PM

Closest I can find, (yes I am so facinated I've been googling since your post

) is this excert. However, I'm sure you'd know a shrew from a mice. Have a read anyway

Posted by Morris Munns on May 01, 2005 at 06:44 PM

Q: We have a small inner-city (Battersea)garden but with a pond a good frog population & some mice. Today I heard a frog screaming & found it had a mouse (tho' I couldn't see clearly) fastened onto its back leg. I scared it off & rescued the frog.Is this a field mouse such as I have seen before, a different type of mouse or a shrew ? I'm fairly certain it wasn't a rat.Do mice eat frogs I thought they were seed eaters?

A: Believe it or not, mice will sometimes eat meat, however they're not very likely attacking live animals. Your thought that it might be a shrew is probably correct. Shrews are very active predators and I can easily see them attacking a frog. Although with really close inspection, you can see the difference between a shrew and a mouse, with just a quick look, they're very similar. Thanks for asking.

-- John Wiessinger (May 02, 2005)

Posted by Dan on March 11, 2004 at 01

aeshna5 · #5 (**permalink**) 05-02-2009, 04:32 AM

On a couple of southern ocean islands there are real problems of House Mice eating seabird- particularly albatross-chicks + having quite an impact on their populations. These island forms of mice are larger than normal.

wellies101 · #6 (**permalink**) 05-02-2009, 05:18 PM

Galanthus, interesting read, but yes we know our mice from our shrews so back to square one.

Aeshna5, the guy that spotted it has spent a lot of time working on Orkney and surrounding islands for the RSPB and did some research on rat predation on seabird eggs and chicks. He was also aware, though they aren't officially classed as seperate species, of 3 islands which had mice with subtle variations between each island population. Most of all though, all three islands had "larger" mice, they basically were bigger and weighed more, but again, he knows what a rat looks like.

This is an interesting one and behaviour probably rarely seen. Another question to ask could be what was the frog doing out in the open on snow too!!! Did the mouse actively seek it out?