Frogs eat insects, right? And sometimes other invertebrates, and maybe little vertebrates like tiny fish or tadpoles or smaller frogs. But this is one of those neat cases where you have a total departure from what's expected.
While Xenohyla truncata (aka "Izecksohn's Brazilian tree frog") does eat some invertebrate prey, it also deliberately seeks out fruit. Given that it lives high in the canopy of the rain forest amid bromeliads, it's not out of the realm of possibility that this started out as supplementing a normal frog diet with high-calorie fruit in tough times, and evolution favored those that were able to make better nutritional use of this opportunity.
It reminds me of the (mostly) vegetarian spider Bagheera kiplingi, and how primarily herbivorous ungulates like horses and deer will opportunistically eat baby birds or gnaw on carrion and bones. While we can make generalizations about the dietary habits of certain groups of animals, there are exceptions to every rule. And I personally find the existence of these unique outliers to be part of what makes the natural world so utterly fascinating--no matter how much we learn, there are always more surprises to discover.
The Stickyfrogs received a Lovely Surprise in their Special Postbox today! A Letter from Abby in New Jersey! 😊🐸
Round Frog got to open the Letter! Voigt found a Very Cool Frog Wax Seal on the back! Jens was in charge of reading the very kind message from Abby to all the Stickyfrogs! And Long Frog showed everyone the very cute stickers that came too!
Thank you Very Very Much to Abby! The Stickyfrogs all send you 78 Kissies!