Amphibian diet and nutrition

Amphibians are a very diverse group of vertebrates; however, in general their feeding is opportunistic with food up to gape width being ingested. Amphibians such as frogs and toads only target moving prey and prefer elongated prey such as crickets or insect larvae that move across their field of vision. However, many aquatic amphibians will target food by scent and will consume inert food. The suitability and range of live feeds are assessed in the Amphibian Population Management Guidelines (Schad 2007). Because we cannot simulate the natural diet of many wild amphibians, that often eat 100’s to 1000’s of prey daily, we have to provide nutrition using a few invertebrate species of relatively large size (McWilliams 2008).