Nutrition

The northern leopard frog is considered to be an opportunistic feeder, which means they sit and wait for their prey to come to them.  Their diet mostly consists of insects, such as damselflies, but they have been found to eat worms, snails, slugs, and smaller frogs such as the Spring Peeper.  The tadpole form of the northern leopard frog eats plant tissues and bacteria from a plant by scraping their mouth over the plant surfaces. 

The digestive system in Rana pipiens first begins at the mouth of the organism.  Inside the mouth this frog does have teeth inside the upper jaw, these are used to grid its food before swallowing and digestion.  These teeth are not very strong, so they do not assist them in the capture of prey.  The food then travels down the esophagus and into the stomach.  After reaching the stomach, the food then travels to the small intestine where most of the digestion takes place to absorb the nutrients.  The ruminants then move through the large intestine and out the cloaca and excreted as waste.  The cloaca (in Latin means “sewer”) is the opening where both urine and feces are excreted.  Cloaca are present in all amphibians, birds, and reptiles. 

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