Food and feeding ( Amphibian )
Adult amphibians consume a wide variety of foods. Earthworms are the main diet of burrowing caecilians, anurans feed primarily on insects and other arthropods, and large salamanders and some large anurans eat small vertebrates, including birds and mammals. Most anurans and salamanders locate prey by sight, although some use their sense of smell. The majority of salamanders and diurnal (i.e., active during daylight) terrestrial anurans are active foragers, but most other anurans employ a sit-and-wait technique. Caecilians locate their prey with a chemosensory tentacle and capture their quarry with a powerful bite. Aquatic salamanders lunge at their prey with an open mouth and appear to suck the victim in by expanding their buccal (oral) cavity. The lunged terrestrial salamander extends its sticky tongue, which is attached anteriorly to the floor of the mouth, to ensnare a meal. In lungless salamanders the hyobranchial apparatus does not function in buccal respiration, and the hyobranchium is modified so that it can project the tongue from the mouth. Prey can be captured with the sticky end of the projectile tongue at distances of 40 to 80 percent of the body length. Primitive anurans have feeding mechanisms that resemble those of the typical terrestrial salamanders. More advanced anurans employ a lingual flip, in which the posterodorsal surfaces of the retracted tongue invert to become the anteroventral surface of the fully extended tongue. The pipids, which are completely aquatic, uniquely lack tongues and therefore have to essentially suck food and water into their mouths.
[tags]food, feeding, amphibian[/tags]
