Good evening everybody and welcome to our Thursday night members webinar. My name is Bruce Stevenson and I have the pleasure of chairing tonight's session. Just a little bit of housekeeping, for those couple of new members that are logged on.
If you want to ask a question of our, presenter, Hary or cursor over the screen, control panel will come up and just click on the Q&A, type it in there and we will hold it all over to the end. So I presented tonight. Sean McCormick qualified as a vet in 2010 from the University College in Dublin after studying an undergraduate bachelor's degree in animal science.
He started his veterinary career working in a domestic, exotic and zoo practise in Kent and later two other domestic and exotic practises in West London. Having studied animal sciences before his veterinary degree, he had a broad base of knowledge in zoology, anatomy, physiology, husbandry, and nutrition of a wide range of animal species. And he currently still lectures regularly on exotics and nutritional topics.
In 2016, Sean left clinical practise to work for the pet food company Tails.com, where he is now head vet and manages the veterinary affairs. For those of you that have heard Sean before, you know that you are in for an absolute treat.
So Sean, once again, welcome back to the webinar vet and it's over to you. Thanks very much, Bruce, great intro as usual. Thanks everyone for joining tonight.
It is a bit of a niche topic, but it's definitely a topic that, I'm very keen on. It's kind of my, niche interest subject, I guess. I gave a similar talk to, students at the Zoological Society in the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in Camden a couple of years ago, and it was very well received by them, those students interested in exotic topics.
But I wanted to cover, kind of a broader kind of spectrum of, amphibian biology, I suppose, than just how to treat a frog or or a salamander if it shows up in clinic. So there's, there is a surprising amount of, kind of amphibian biology that has, kind of. Advanced humankind and our knowledge of medical kind of topics and genomics and stuff like that.
So I'll touch a little bit on that and also touch a little bit on conservation globally and how amphibians are kind of an indicator species for conservation problems. So, and then obviously I will try and equip you with some knowledge if you do have an amphibian patient in clinic. So, first things first, my background really, where did my interest in frogs and toads and all things slimy and hoppy come from.
I'm a kind of self-confessed nature nerd. I was like that as a kid, and I was always fascinated by, you know, the tadpoles that we would get every spring in the classroom and try and raise into frogs. And I guess the life cycle of amphibians really fascinated me there.
And I guess the, the kind of interest in keeping tropical amphibians and so on started when I was about 12 and asked for tree frogs as a Christmas present, and my parents wondered what kind of child they were raising. But I kept a lot of reptiles and amphibians as I, as I grew in my teenage years. And then when I qualified, you know, knew that I had a bit more knowledge than a lot of vets on these kind of Animals and grew a kind of exotic reputation from there.
In my animal science degree as well, we did a lot of kind of comparative anatomy of all the vertebrate species, so looking at kind of evolutionary anatomy and physiology and so on. And then I also worked while I was at vet school in Dublin in the Conway Institute as a lab technician looking after their laboratory colonies of zebrafish and Xenopus, African clawed frogs as well. So a bit of a broad background, that kind of all relates to amphibians, in some way.
So as I say, what is the relevance of amphibian medicine? You all probably have different reasons for tuning in tonight. Some might be bemusement or a bit of a, a weird interest in how the hell is he going to talk for an hour on amphibians.
We're vets, we don't, you know, get to see these species. Is it relevant to me? Some of you may see a few amphibians a year or or even every month and just want to brush up on clinical knowledge, and some of you might be interested in the kind of broader side of kind of global amphibian conservation.
And global conservation, obviously is, is a big, it's a topic close to my heart, but it's a big issue at this point in time. One is that global warming is affecting them, very much so, with kind of ozone layer depletion and global warming and rising temperatures, they're very sensitive to those things and they, they inhabit very specific ecological niches across the world. We're seeing huge catastrophic declines in in certain species and extinctions, you know, all the time in amphibians unfortunately.
The other big thing on a global scale is that we have emerging infectious diseases in amphibian populations which are wiping them out. And there's a fungal disease called Cytridiomycosis, which is really decimating amphibian populations globally. And amphibians, as I said at the start, are really a biological indicator species for the health of the planet and the health of individual ecosystem and multiple ecosystems that are joined up.
So when we start to lose them, it has knock-on effects of the food chain and to the overall ecology of certain habitats, and biomes across the world. There's a lot of endangered species. There's a global conservation kind of, issue with some of the captive populations that we might end up working with even in this country.
You know, we have, certain species like the mountain chicken frog, which was down to a few individuals and a lot of UK captive collection, zoo collections are really pushing kind of the conservation of that species and doing a wonderful job of restoring it in its natural habitat. Apart from that, I think closer to home, UK conservation is really, really important, and we have a few, globally threatened species and nationally threatened species. The great crested newt in the middle picture there is a fantastic native species we have, but really in decline and .
Suffering a lot from habitat loss and potentially infectious diseases as well. The Natterjack toad as well, very much a specialist native amphibian that requires specific habitats. Again, being fragmented and being isolated into closed populations is really having a detrimental effect on that species.
And then we also have the issue of invasive species, sometimes coming in, you know, in kind of horticultural, shipments and things from the continent and so on, but also unfortunately, deliberate or accidental releases from captive, amphibian collections as well. With things like alpine newts, now that are being found around the country, midwife toads, lots of different, amphibian species that can potentially harm the the the native ecosystem, but also bring in infectious disease as well. In terms of the pet industry, they are a relevant group of animals just in terms of economic impact and, and, and that, because it is a big trade, you know, we do have kind of tropical fish keeping.
A lot of amphibians come through that sort of hobby and the kind of reptile and amphibian hobby in itself has a big economic impact in this country. And also there's welfare issues there because I think anyone who's tuned into any of my kind of reptile, talks before, I've talked at length about kind of the ethics and welfare issues around keeping these species, and there are high mortality rates and things with with wild caught animals being brought into the pet trade. So that's something that we might, you know, get involved with, with our veterinary hat on.
And then the last section, kind of kind of broader relevance than just a pet showing up in the clinic would be laboratory medicine and really amphibians have been integral to our understanding of genomes and embryology in particular. Xenopus is the African clawed frog. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with that, with that species of frog, but it's the most one of the most widely used laboratory animals, alongside mice in the world.
We mapped the human genome, using our understanding of X Xenopus genome. We learned a lot of what we know about embryology by looking at Xenopus embryos as well, because they produce a lot of eggs at one time, and very easy to manipulate, to ovulate and to produce eggs, but also the embryo size is very large compared to other organisms. So Xenopus frog has really been a huge .
Ally to our advancement of medical knowledge and medical discoveries. So in terms of classification, what are, what is an amphibian? An amphibian, the by definition is, vertebrate species that is still tied to water to some degree, in order to fulfil its life cycle.
And you can have very terrestrial amphibians. That, you know, don't really need much water, but you can have most of them need kind of moist habitats at some point in their, in their life cycle, and a lot of them require that they live in water during their juvenile stages. But they can be briefly broken down into three main Paw dates, which means the tailed amphibians, so newts and salamanders, and then a very unusual and little understood group of worm-like amphibians called Sicilians that mainly live underground, and we don't know a lot about them, but in all of those classes, we do see, we do see new species being discovered, every week or every month, and unfortunately we see extinctions as well.
So just breaking down the common types of species that you, you may see in, in the clinical environment or hear some of your clients talking about them keeping just to familiar familiarise yourself with some of those species and what they require. The tree frogs are probably some of the most popular ones that are kept as pets for a couple of reasons. One being they tend To be very colourful and very attractive and often tend to be quite small as well.
So they're quite easy to keep well in a fairly small enclosure. A lot of them are nocturnal, you know, they come out at night, but that suits a lot of people that, you know, are out during the day and want to just observe these animals in the evening times when they start to become active. And you get a huge range of different species in captivity.
Some of them are very easy to keep and very much beginner frogs, and some of them a little more difficult. The one on the left is an American green tree frog, which is the species I asked for as a kid for Christmas, and the one that we see everywhere in advertising on the right is the red-eyed tree frog, a little bit more delicate that species. Other ones, which are very, very impressive in terms of size, but you know, really don't do very much except sit and wait and eat whatever they're given, would be the horn frogs and bullfrogs, African bullfrog in particular.
Very impressive frogs, if you're into that kind of thing. And, but as I say, sometimes referred to as kind of a mouth on legs or a pet rock, because they don't do a lot, but I think people keep them because of their impressive size they grow to, and demeanour. Then more commonly, I think even kind of the clients that will, will have frogs aren't necessarily into exotic pets, but maybe want something a little bit different for their aquarium with their fish, or instead of fish, if they have an aquarium would be some of the aquatic frogs and toads.
And these are quite commonly kept in non-specialist or stocked in non-specialist pet shops. Xenopus is the, the pair of albino ones here we see are the same Xenopus species that we get in laboratories. But they're very easy to kind of breed and propagate and they often show up in the pet trade.
They're fairly low maintenance, easy to keep, but they will eat fish, so often, they're a bad idea when you buy them as a very small frog and they turn into Quite a big frog and eat all of your tropical fish. The other one would be the fire bellied toad, which again is quite an easy pet to keep. But sometimes we run into problems with these and they end up in the vet clinic because they're sort of sold as very much almost disposable kind of aquarium pets, and they're not given the right care, the right with attention to diet and lighting and heating and so on.
So we will see some of those come through, no doubt. The other group then would be the true toads. So, toads as opposed to frogs normally have a dry kind of warty skin.
They have large parotid glands that secrete a toxin, bufotoxin, behind the eyes. They tend to crawl rather than hop, crawl or walk rather than hop like a frog, and a few other differences, but the toads can be quite, charismatic, animals to keep, . They're quite reactive to feeding time and and so on, and people do describe them as having, you know, individual personalities that can be quite intelligent, as well, believe it or not.
And very long lived as well. Some of the, the, toads will live, you know, can live upwards of 30 years. So, they can become a real pet for someone who's had them a long time.
The ones that are absolutely stunningly beautiful and, and very much a hobby in its own right is dart frogs, and dart frogs are very, very tiny. Most of them are kind of no longer than kind of 4 to 5 centimetres in length, and they're normally kept in very naturalistic, beautiful enclosures, which is as much of a hobby for the keepers as the frogs themselves tending to the plants and the habitat and and automated lights and misting systems and so on. Very rare that you would get dart frogs into the vet clinic because the people who keep them tend to know everything there is to know about them.
They keep them very well. If a dart frog gets ill, it's, it's not an easy patient to treat because of its tiny size and often they're living in naturalistic enclosures and, and you, if you do have fatalities, they often can go unnoticed until it's too late. So you won't see them very much, but it's useful to know a little bit about them.
The other pet, Really, really fascinating and again, they're quite important to kind of human medical knowledge. Axolotls are basically a neotenic form of a Mexican salamander, and neotenic neoteny means they retain their juvenile characteristics. So most salamanders will lay their eggs or larvae in water and they have external gills as they grow, and then when they leave the water, they, they absorb the external feathery gills on the side of the head, and start to breathe atmospheric air and live on land.
Mexican axolotls live in lived in a high altitude lake in Mexico, which is now a series of canals in Mexico City, and they never left the lake because it was a more stable environment. So they retain their juvenile characteristics and they breed as the juvenile form. So they're quite striking and unusual animals and for that reason they became quite popular in the pet trade.
But before they were ever, released into the pet trade, they were a very important laboratory animal, because they show incredible powers of, regeneration. If their limbs are cut off, they can regenerate an entire limb. They can suffer catastrophic injuries and regenerate whole parts of their body, including parts of their vital organs, their tail, you know, they can regrow those feathery limbs if, if something bites them off.
So they've been extensively studied for, kind of stem cell research and, and, limb regeneration properties. And the sad news, I guess, for, for the axolotl is that because their native habitat has been sort of decimated and urbanised and there's a lot of pollution there. There's a lot of introduced fish like carp and so on.
It's thought that the axolotl is, is pretty much extinct, if not very, very near extinct in its natural habitat, but absolutely millions of them in, in, in captive populations globally. There's a few other species of neotenic salamander as well, but the axolotl is by far the most common. The other kind of caudates that we would see would be salamanders and newts from various parts of the world.
Salamanders tend to be more land dwelling than newts. Newts are very much kind of tied to land and water, and they'll go into the water for part of the year, to breed and to hunt and feed and so on, and come out then other times of year to kind of live on land and hibernate later on. Moving on then from the kind of common groups that we will see in recognising what's what, I think it's important to just recognise that these are a very primitive group of animals and they do have some quite unique anatomy, some of which relate or is really important for us to take into account if we're going to give advice on husbandry or if we're going to try and treat them as inpatients or outpatients from the clinic.
First of all, their skin is really, really unique in that it's very permeable, you know, it's a soft, moist skin normally. Some of the more land dwelling or terrestrial species will have a, a kind of moisture retention strategy of having a drier kind of wartier skin, that that kind of has wax and moisture retention properties in it. But most of them have a very permeable skin and it's permeable to moisture and to oxygen and gas exchange as well.
It's non-caratinis, so therefore it's very fragile, and you can have lacerations and skinny injuries and abrasions and so on very easily if if the husbandry isn't quite correct or if there's trauma there. They're prone to desiccation, so some of them, depending on their natural habitat, will be adapted to desiccation in dry times. They, some of the burrowing frogs and bullfrogs and so on will actually dig down into the soil in during a dry spell, and they'll encase themselves in layers of mucus that dry up and form a protective moisture retentive capsule.
And then when rains come along, they'll they'll emerge from the ground again to breed. So they're very much adapted to their environment, but if we keep them too dry for their kind of natural habitat in captivity, that is a big stressor and can cause serious illness over time. So we really need to get their, their habitat and their kind of natural history right if we're going to keep them correctly.
Because they're so sensitive in terms of their skin as well, and it's so permeable, they're also very, very prone to, kind of the detrimental effects of pollutants. So that's a big problem for kind of because they're an aquatic creature or at least tied to an aquatic habitat. If we have water pollution or water quality suffers, unfortunately, amphibians and fish are are two of the first groups of animals to suffer as well.
In terms of their kind of, circulatory system, it's, it's a combination of the cardiovascular system and quite an advanced lymphatic system as well. And they have a variable number of, of lymphatic hearts throughout the body and vessels which are separate to the cardiovascular system. And in terms of their I talked already about the skin.
The, the skin is the first part of the respiratory system. The respiratory system has three parts really, so they can absorb, absorb, have gas exchange from the skin, but they can also swallow air. So they have a lot of mucosa in kind of the mouth and pharynx, where they can absorb kind of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange from those membranes.
So you will see aquatic species like newts and axolotls and things coming up to the surface of the water and gulping air, if the oxygen levels are low. And then they do have a, a simple pulmonic system for respiration as well. Interesting again to note that the difference between the juvenile stages and and the adult stages, you know, in, in kind of the aneurys, frogs and toads, tadpoles, most of them in the very early tadpole stage will have external feathery gills and lose them while they're still in the water and then start air breathing before they metamorphose into, into the tailless adult.
But in the, the caudates, the newts and salamanders, they all have the feathery gills until they emerge, from, from, the water onto land. Their gastrointestinal system is very, very simple. Virtually every, amphibian species is a carnivorous species.
I think there was one species discovered, very recently in the last year or so. New to science that said there was partly kind of vegetarian element to its diet. I can't remember exactly what the species was called, but for, for by and large they are carnivorous exclusively, and they will eat basically whatever live creature they find moving and draws their attention and that they can fit in their mouth.
They're very voracious, . Predators really, and it can be surprising what some of the larger species can eat, you know, other mammals and birds and, and all sorts of, other vertebrates that are sometimes almost the same size as them. In terms of their urinary system, normally the aquatic species just have direct excretion, of urine, but the terrestrial species will have urea and uric acid, as, as a preferred method, excreted as a solid with the, with the faeces normally.
Now moving on to kind of how we keep them, just like with reptiles or even indeed many exotic pets, the real, the real secret to keeping amphibians successfully in captivity, whether it's a private collection or a zoo, or a specific conservation project that's doing, you know, breeding and release programmes and so on. The secret here is, is getting the husbandry correct. And the reason we do that is to minimise captivity stress and related disease.
Because if we get any of the elements that that they need from their environment wrong, even by, you know, a few degrees in temperature or a couple of percentage points on the idea. Humidity level or if we get the photo period, you know, day length and so on incorrect, that can cause chronic stress and biological stress on that animal because it's not adapted for the conditions it then finds itself in in captivity and you do get chronic stress leading to disease conditions there as well. The second thing to do is really look to the natural history of the species in question.
Look at where they come from, what the seasonal, kind of variations in in environment are, what the climate is like, what that animal feeds on in the wild, even at different times of year, and try and replicate natural conditions. You will not go far wrong with keeping any exotic pet that isn't domesticated if you look to their natural habitat and and natural conditions and try and replicate that as best you can. The other thing is facilitating natural kind of processes and behaviour.
So if you're keeping tree frogs, there's no point keeping them on in a small kind of flat, or, or, kind of low tank. They need to have height, they need to climb, they need to feel secure, with foliage and branches and things to hide in. Similarly, you know, if you're keeping a highly aquatic species and you're not giving it enough of water space, to, to occupy or the water space is too small, it's becoming fouled by, you know, insect prey or, or kind of excretions, faeces and so on, then that animal is going to suffer.
And in terms of behaviour as well, you know, you can have social considerations. So with some of the dart frogs, it's contraindicated to keep two males together because they will actually fight to the death, death, some of them. So learning about their natural processes and behaviour is really important.
And I think the last thing to say is it's very easy to sort of read a care sheet online that's very prescriptive and says if you keep an, you know, a cane toad, it needs to be kept just like this, and, and you need to use this equipment. Prescriptive advice doesn't always apply depending on other variables and and how it's interpreted. So there are different ways to achieve these aims, and I think it's important for us to recognise that.
And if we have . Good tips to pass on to other clients as well. So we'll move on to kind of some of the specifics around husbandry and why they're important.
The first thing to say is, temperature is, is very important. So we, you know, can have temperate species like our UK native species, that don't need very warm environments and then we have things like the red-eyed tree frog I showed you, which. You know, comes from Costa Rica and Bolivia and Brazil and so on, and needs very high humidity and high temperatures, but lives in the treetops, therefore needs very high ventilation as well.
And all of those factors come together to to kind of influence the temperature. And what we want to know and what we want to provide is a preferred optimal temperature zone, so the POTZ. Is basically the, the kind of temperature gradient that allows that creature to select where it wants to be at different times of day and maintain its body temperature at the ideal.
And we've, we provide a thermal gradient by, by kind of heating from one end of the enclosure. To the other. If it's a tall enclosure and we're heating from above, then the higher temperatures will be in the upper reaches of the, the, Bavarian and the lower areas will be cool and the frog will move up and down depending on where it wants to be and what the optimal temperature is at each point.
Similarly, if we're dealing with a terrestrial species heating one end of a long kind of horizontal enclosure will allow that animal to move across the enclosure and regulate its own temperature. Heat stress is a massive, massive killer of amphibians. So if we're not giving them that space to choose their own, their own point in that thermal gradient, we're putting heat stress on them and we're probably going to lead to disease problems or death, unfortunately if it overheats.
We've ambient versus local kind of temperatures, so you can have hotspots for some of the basking species. There are a few, and just recognise what kind of niche the different species occupy and provide that for them, in physical environment, so they can take advantage of those, temperature gradients. Humidity is really critical, as we said, they're kind of tied to moist habitats for the most part, and even some of the terrestrial kind of arid living species do need a microhabitat which is a bit damper, so they'll crawl under a log or under a rock and shuffle down into the substrate, and they'll have just a little bit of a microclimate which is humid, even if the external environment is very, very dry.
Water provision is really, really important. It's very important that we provide quality, clean water, for the fully aquatic species. We should be providing filtration in a large body of water for those to keep the water, parameters, you know, down to kind of very clean and very fresh.
We want to be careful about contamination, so some, some owners will use kind of rainwater or distilled water, but be careful not to have contamination from native amphibians coming into a captive collection. And waste products from a captive collection getting out into a natural habitat as well. And then also with water, very important to remove chlorine from tap water before using it on amphibians because they will be irritated.
Their skin will be very irritated by chlorine in tap water. In terms of substrate then when we're designing their enclosure, you know, there's two real kind of modes of, of husbandry or or styles of husbandry. One being natural, which you can see on the left where we try and mimic exactly the sort of habitat, that the animal comes from in the wild versus artificial, which can be very sterile environments in kind of laboratory setups or large breeding collections and so on.
And there's a great, there's a movement, you know, that's getting more popular in the reptile and amphibian hobby now, called bioactive setups, which are really a living ecosystem, a large enclosure planted with natural substrates, custodian invertebrates living in there like spring tails and wood lice and things that break down the natural waste products, and that's. A sort of a system that the keeper designs, never to need cleaning out. It only needs maintenance to trim back some plants and often it's very automated, but it's basically a whole ecosystem within, within the one enclosure and everything lives in balance, and that's, that's quite good for amphibians because they are quite a hands off type pet.
In terms of environmental design itself, you know, we have the sort of clinical and laboratory style versus the naturalistic style, and both of them do have their merits depending on what we're trying to achieve or what species we're keeping or, or for what purpose. So in terms of the clinical design, it's typified by, you know, minimal, kind of furniture, to aid kind of handling of, of the animals or collection of the animals, to, to make it easier to clean on a regular basis if we're, if we're using an intensive system where we have, say, you know, racks of tanks of clawed frogs in the laboratory, we want to be able to put a syphon in there and clean up any solid waste products from the floor of the tank. Furniture would get in the way in that in that system.
If they have a substrate at all, it's, it's normally very basic. Sometimes it's just beads or, or, kind of rubber mat. Straight in there, it's kind of easy observation and husbandry tasks, as I say, but can it compromise psychological well-being?
Do frogs have psychological well-being? I think, we're, we're all. Close to the same page that you know, most vertebrate species need certain things to to have psychological or emotional well-being and I think although primitive amphibians are not an exception to that, you know, they do have emotional and psychological needs to feel secure.
It can be suited to some species, but it is very much not suited to other species. So some of the very delicate species that are stressy and difficult to acclimatise to a captive environment really wouldn't do well in a kind of a barren or sterile clinical environment like like these. They do often necessitate frequent handling or disturbance for maintenance tasks because there's more, it's kind of more hands on to keep it clean and so on.
Larger species that are very, Produce a lot of waste and so on. It can be quite suitable for those. And then the opposite, the naturalistic design is something that can be, almost kind of a hobby or a feature in itself and the frogs that are kept within are almost an aside, you know, they're an extra part of it.
But that's typified by kind of natural furniture and substrate. So, you know, different types, soil types, and a really deep understanding of, of the habitat that the animal comes from in its natural environment. It will factor in, hopefully we will factor in a natural behaviour if it's a successful design, taking into account arboreal species that live in trees, terrestrial or burrowing species.
Aesthetically, it obviously, you know, unless you have very kind of, niche, tastes, I think aesthetically the naturalistic designs are much nicer. There is a hygiene and pathogen issue, you know, if you do have a large collection and, and you do bring in, say, a parasite or some kind of fungal disease. Obviously the naturalistic enclosure type is very much more difficult to sterilise.
It's often a case of scrapping the whole lot and disposing of it and disinfecting, starting again. So that can be difficult in terms of maintenance. But most of them are designed to be bioactive to some degree, the plants and the invertebrates and the other organisms within the system.
Do the cleaning and and the maintenance for you as long as you don't overload it with with the the occupants, you know, that are producing the waste and so on. Psychological well-being, I think if you get it correct with naturalistic design, it can't be beaten. And it's very easy then to provide a range of microclimates.
The bigger the enclosure, the more sort of little niches you include in there, the more, kind of variation you can get with microclimates. It really suits species that you don't want to handle your, you know, most, most amphibians are not pets for handling, they're for, for observing really, with a couple of exceptions that tolerate it, but generally, you know, infrequent handling is best for, for amphibians. Moving on then from the kind of physical environment to diets, as well as husbandry, you know, diet is really key in getting the nutrition right for any exotic species often is, you know, the other half of the battle in terms of keeping them healthy and keeping them well.
And as I said before, they're exclusively carnivorous, really. Most of them are primary insectivores, so they'll be eating insects primarily. Some of the larger ones.
Will tackle vertebrates as well. So, fish, other amphibians, even members of their own, their own species, reptiles, birds, and mammals, they're all on the menu for, for various amphibian species. But in the, in captivity, sorry, we often rely on commercially bred insects, so things like crickets, locusts, mealworms, wax worms, and so on.
And it's one of the downfalls of relying on commercially raised insects is they're not always a fully kind of balanced nutritional packet when we buy them from the pet shop or from the online supplier. So there's a few efforts that we need to make, and if we're advising on any of our clients that keep amphibians around diet, I think it's important to gauge how much they know about the important, the kind of interventions we need to make around the insects we buy. And the first thing that we need to do when we get the insects home is we need to gut load them.
So that means we need to replenish the, the kind of nutrition that the insect itself has had, because often they're raised on a fairly basic diet in the, in the production facility, and then they're packaged up and they go in a shipment to the retail outlets or shipped through the post to the individual customers that have ordered them online on a kind of dry substrate of brand normally or something like that, that's not very nutritious. So their gut is empty, they're quite dehydrated. It's important that we, kind of, give them something more nutritious to eat and restore their moisture content.
But once we've done. The reptiles. After that, we need to recognise that the calcium and phosphorus balance within a lot of these commercial insects is not quite what an amphibian or reptile needs.
So in the wild, they'd be eating a variety of insects that are in turn eating a variety of natural foods and living on natural soils, and the overall balance of calcium phosphorus and other vitamins and minerals will be correct. But in captivity we have to correct that ourselves. So, a lot of them are, deficient in calcium, so we need to be really supplementing them with a calcium supplement on almost every feed.
To correct that imbalance of calcium and phosphorus. And then every so often it depends whether we're treating or whether we're supplementing, you know, young growing animals. It depends sometimes whether we're giving them UVB light and so on, but we should probably be supplementing them occasionally once a week or once a fortnight with a a complete and balanced multivitamin and mineral supplement, which is a powder that we dust onto the, the insects, and that should contain vitamin D3.
So supplementation is, is a topic all in itself, but it's important that if we take a good history, we learn to tease out those, those, those factors and kind of question whether the animals just getting, you know, a box of crickets a week and there's nothing been done with those crickets. That's a recipe for a nutritional deficiency. Wild invertebrates, some amphibian keepers will use wild invertebrates, so, I feed my axolotls on earthworms that I dig up on my allotment, .
You know, I will sometimes, if a blue bottle fly comes in, I'll catch it and throw it into the tree frogs and watch them hunt that. But, it's important if people are feeding wild invertebrates that they just take care that they're not, they're not from an area that was treated with pesticides or chemicals, for instance. A lot of people will feed some of the larger amphibians like your bullfrogs and horn frogs and so on, vertebrate prey, so frozen mice, you know, or rat pups and things like that.
And there's a tendency among the kind of reptile and amphibian hobby, more so the reptile hobby, I think, with big snakes and lizards and things to, feed fast and grow fast and sort of power feed these animals so that they grow to an impressive size very quickly. That is a recipe for disaster with amphibians. You do get a much higher incidence of hepatic lipiddosis if you're sort of force feeding or or rapidly feeding these amphibians, especially if they're heating and lighting and stuff isn't isn't correct.
So power feeding with rodents and so on is something to be avoided. I think an occasional treat of a vertebrate prey item is fine, but most of these animals should be fed on primarily an insect diet. Much lower in fat and so on.
With some of the aquatic species, you know, you feed them, feed them on fish, and it's important you recognise that you can get thiamine or vitamin B1 deficiency if you're feeding certain types of fish like commercially available goldfish. You know, there's a thyinase enzyme issue with those that can lead to thymine deficiency. So variety is, you know, the spice of life on any of these things.
I think trying to replicate the natural conditions that a frog or a toad or a salamander or whatever in the wild wouldn't be feeding on a single species of insects for the entire year long. That's important. Going back a little bit to physical environment, then heating, humidity and lighting, all tied in again with giving that animal its preferred optimal thermal zone or temperature zone, providing the gradient so that they can move from one area to the other and regulate their own body temperature because they are ectothermic.
They're reliant on external temperature to control their own body temperature, and that's through behaviour. There's lots of different heating and lighting options out there. In terms of primary heat sources, you have bulbs, you know, incandescent bulbs, ceramic heaters which don't emit any light, heat mats as well that will go onto the side of the tank or underneath the tank.
And depending on life mode and enclosure design, there's various ways of heating, you have to think about the animal in question and where it's going to get its heat from, does it bask? Does it burrow down? Does it absorb heat from its environment, physically and so on.
Really essential pieces of kit that I think you need to encourage any reptile or amphibian owner to have, very basic, but it's surprising how many don't have them, a thermometer which measures temperature, high grometer measuring humidity, and a thermostat to control the temperature so that it's not getting too high, which is really a rapid killer or too low, which is a chronic stressor. UVB needs, UV lighting is sort of a, debatable, topic with amphibians. I would say that if we look to first principles and replicating natural habitats, then amphibians in the wild are not entirely living in the dark.
They're they're receiving some UV exposure. But even the nocturnal species are still getting UV light from dappled sunlight and things in the canopy if they're tree frogs, or, or, or kind of UV penetrating holes in the ground and things they're living in. So we should have a low level UV bulb, I think, on our amphibian enclosures, that way they're getting natural vitamin D from the the the UV vitamin D and calcium cycle.
I mean if they, if they're not getting enough through. Lighting or through supplementation, we get metabolic bone disease and amphibians just as, just as much. Well, maybe not just as much, but because reptiles are far more diurnal and it's the very diurnal high UVB requiring species of reptile that need UV and suffer from metabolic bone disease more.
But amphibians do suffer from metabolic bone disease if they have a lack of vitamin D in their diet or lighting. In terms of water and humidity, it's important to say that, just a standing bowl of water won't give the same humidity values as moving water. So sometimes a small submersible pump in the water source can really help and push up the, the humidity, in, in an enclosure.
Now, what do we do when we're presented with a frog, you know, a kid comes in with a tree frog or our first kind of amphibian enthusiast comes in with some new frogs that they've gotten and they're worried about. We have to do a clinical exam. So I think being familiar with the species is, is important, so you know what looks normal.
But when we have them in front of us, observation is the first thing really. So take a hands-off approach if you can and observe what you can. These little clear plastic kind of deli containers are really, really useful for looking at the underside of these frogs.
Cricket tubs that the crickets come in are actually quite useful for that as well. So it's useful to have some on hand. If we're going to handle them at all, it's important that we are very, very careful in how we handle them, and we don't damage their delicate and porous skin.
So, I would say using wet, rubber gloves, non-treated, rubber gloves, and wet them first in, in some, running water and shake it off as well. We don't want to remember put too much chlorinated water on them. If we have distilled water on the rubber gloves, all the better.
Look at their body condition score, you know, if they're emaciated, it can be quite, apparent because they're spinal, you know, there'll be spinal protrusions and even the hip bones and the pelvis will be visible as well. But knowing what's normal, some of the, bullfrogs and and African, or sorry, horn frogs, do literally look like a ball, and they, they look to be massively obese, but that can be normal for them. But, know the difference between normal and obese because obesity is a problem in those species.
Look for symmetry, really look at the eyes as well. A lot of frogs, when they're resting will close their eyes and pop a membrane over them, but if you make them a little bit alert, they'll open the eyes and the eyes can actually, kind of show you a few problems as well. Opacities on the eyes are often a sign of chronic stress, or kind of infectious disease or trauma.
And they don't have a pupillary light reflex, so, that's, that's not useful to us. Doing an oral exam can be, can be, indicated sometimes as well. Or if we're dosing them with a, you know, age tube or a syringe for oral medications, sometimes we need to do an oral exam and a small smooth sided plastic kind of spatula device and will be helpful to, to open the mouth but be very, very careful, especially if you suspect metabolic bone disease.
The mandible is one of the first things to soften in that condition. I'm taking a good history really and going back on all of those things we've talked about about husband nutrition, so you can identify what might be the problem here is, is, one of the most important things while you're doing a clinical exam, because most of them are prey species, they don't show illness until it's very, very late. If you do need to do blood collection, good luck, it's very difficult.
But there's a couple of venous sinuses and a vein on the ventral tongue, but obviously if you're dealing with a tiny little creature like the one in the picture here, that's probably out of the question. A very good thing to get into the habit of doing if you're treating any number of amphibians or reptiles is doing some just basic faecal testing in-house or using that to send off and get screened for for kind of more extensive panel. But wild caught amphibians in particular, if it's a new animal in a collection, and ask the question, is it captive bred or wild caught?
And if it's wild caught, it does need to be quarantined, and it does need a faecal sample because a lot of them do carry, carry parasitic burdens. So there's a huge range of common clinical conditions that are, you know, not, not surprising. All of the normal conditions that can affect any species can be problems in amphibians as well.
So we'll just run through a few of the more common ones before we wrap up. . Amphibian populations, you might have a client saying, asking the question when she's in with her dog.
Oh, would you know the answer to this? All the frogs in my pond have died. And you can get sudden die-offs in, in, wild UK, amphibians due to a very virulent virus called rhanovirus.
In captive collections, it would normally come in from kind of wild, wild caught species or, or even wild amphibians, cross contamination, so take care with that one, but it causes acute death, so we're not going to treat that really in in the clinical environment. There's lots of bacterial infections which tend to be just opportunistic, or secondary infections with commensal bacteria. A lot of them are the normal flora and just with stress, we get kind of immune compromise in chronically stressed frogs, or newly acquired frogs that are acclimatising to the, the new captive environment.
A lot of those will succumb if they're stressed or if everything's not quite right to Aomonas. Pseudomonas, E. Coli infections, and it often causes ventral erythema and pat on the underside of the abdomen, but also on the inner legs and so on.
It's often called red leg amongst amphibian hobbyists. Mycobacterium is possible. I've never seen it, but it's something to be aware of.
Obviously causes kind of granulomas and, and so on, like in any other species, and it is zoonotic, so just be aware of that. Especially in kind of wild caught animals, diagnosis just like anything would be from culture and sensitivity, treating with appropriate antibiotics. Topical antibiotic ointments and so on are are very useful in frogs because it can be just as stressful and push them over the edge if we're injecting them or if we're giving oral medications that can be quite difficult.
But getting the supportive care and husbandry right while we're treating those things is crucial for a successful outcome. Fungal infections, again, we will see in captivity, but the big problem and and the biggest kind of impact of fungal infections is on a global scale with the chytrid fungus that we're seeing being spread. And interestingly, we think that the chytrid fungus, our good friend, the Xenopus clawed frog, unfortunately may have been the reservoir that has spread chytrid fungus, .
Globally around around the world in wild and captive populations, the Xenopbis clawed frog is quite an adept carrier of chytrid fungus and doesn't always die from it. And unfortunately, wild kind of feral populations of released or escaped Xenopus frogs have been found in the UK and globally, and they think that they could be a source of this fungus, but it's a . A fungal disease called batrachoytrium dendrobais, which is the frog or aurine specific one.
There is a caudate or salamander newt specific one as well, which is newly emerging as well. But it does, it does cause like really huge kind of huge scale decimations of native populations, and the mountain chicken frog in Montserrat is probably the most topical and under threat amphibian species which that fungus has devastated. But there are some good conservation programmes happening that are returning that to its natural habitat.
The salamander one is the same genus, but the salamander vorans, and that's an emerging disease that has come into been found in the pet hobby, in the UK, and they think it's coming in with, Asian newt species for kind of aquatic and pet trade. There's a, there's a good intervention that there's been a lot of education done with the kind of pet trade on this, that the way we can prevent it coming in is just by adjusting the temperature at the supplier level where the imports are coming through, putting the temperature up on when we're keeping them for a few days, and that kills off the fungus but doesn't stress out or kill the nuts that are coming in. So you can have clean nuts if you, if you treat them in the correct way, at the kind of import centre.
So hopefully, that's something that we have under control and doesn't cause a huge global outbreak. But it is a really scary threat for our native species, especially the great crested newt. Parasitic infections really, really common in wild caught amphibians.
They're going through stress. They're housed in poor conditions. Luckily, captive bred amphibians are far more common now than wild caught, which were more common years ago.
But we're still seeing, you know, some wild caught amphibian species coming through, and it's important we screen those and treat those properly. Fenbendazole is, is a reliable drug and you can find the dosage in, in the exotic formulas for that. There's another kind of parasite parasitic infection called entammoeba, which causes kind of chronic ill thrift, and, can be kind of go on.
Elections very quickly. Nematodes are very common. Lung worm is, is, a big problem.
Rhadia species, can cause, cause issues. You'll often see gaping with that. And, yeah, learn if you're not doing faecal screening already, you know, get, get that up to date and do a fecale count and a flotation, if you can and and treat accordingly.
Nutritional disease, I talked about briefly, the same principles apply as in reptile medicine really. It's either a lack of dietary calcium or a lack of UV lighting, which causes a deficiency in vitamin D. I would say that providing UVB lighting and providing what we call the light and shade effect and allowing the frog to regulate how much UVB it's getting is the best way to prevent that, rather than relying on kind of the, the vagaries of your nutritional supplements and so on.
Hypovitaminosis A can be common as well, and we see all the same kind of things as we see in, reptiles with that. So kind of cases, abscesses, and, and so on and infections. Prolapses can be common for a variety of reasons, so high parasitic burdens can cause that.
Foreign body ingestion, you know, if, if, aquatic species are kept on loose substrates like aquarium gravel, they can often ingest substrate, and even the terrestrial species can ingest large amounts of substrate when they're hunting. Moving targets basically they can take a a mouthful of soil or substrate in. Any kind of, issues that are causing a ciomic mass or pressure, gastrointestinal disorders, and hypocalcemia again obviously controls muscle contraction and can lead to prolapse if they have a low blood calcium.
First aid is the same as any prolapse in any species. Just advice is to keep it moist and clean, so pop the frog out of its enclosure and get it onto some distilled water or dechlorinated water on tissue paper and and bring it in as soon as possible. Lubricate, you know, sugar solution and so on to reduce swelling.
You can put in a stay suture and then address the underlying cause just like any other species of prolapse. So don't panic if that happens, just use first principles. Neoplasia can happen, as I said, a lot of these animals are surprisingly long lived.
Toads and axolotls and so on can live upwards of 30 years, sometimes 40 years. And some of the tree frogs, you know, the common small tree frogs will live for 12 or 15 years, and we do see neoplasia on kind of long term pets. We're not really seeing, I don't think we're not, we're seeing a, kind of inbreeding effect or neoplasia in certain species or certain lines of amphibians yet, but you never know.
If it's a cutaneous mass, it's much more amenable to kind of surgery and so on, and a better prognosis. Traumatic injuries, just like any other species are possible and possible to treat again using all the same, kind of first principles that we would use, but understanding the the husbandry and and supportive care that amphibians uniquely need. Talked about gastrointestinal foreign bodies occasionally you'll see in the veterinary press stories of a hero vet, heroic vet operating on an axolotl or a salamander that swallowed a stone.
This isn't my x-ray, but I have treated with a rigid endoscope, and a pair of forceps removed some. Stones and and substrate from an axolotl without resorting to surgery. But, those aquatic species like the clawed frogs, like the axolotls, they feed with a suction effect, so they open their mouth very, very quickly when they're in front of food and suck in the food item, and with that can come substrate.
So it's really important if you take a good history with aquatic species, you ask what substrate they're on. It should be sand or very, very fine gravel, but preferably fine sand rather than stones. Ocular disease is quite common.
Now there's a couple of, reasons for that that are quite unique to amphibians. A couple of the species of amphibians that are commonly kept, so white tree frogs, which are often known as dumpy tree frogs. They're one of the very good pet tree frogs that you can actually handle.
They've got a waxy skin and they tolerate handling. They become quite tame. They're.
Very kind of voracious eaters and they suffer a lot from obesity. And where you have excessive dietary fat in those kinds of species or in horn frogs that are very inactive and people enjoy feeding them, you know, large food items all the time, and that can be laid down as corneal deposits, lipid deposits, and cause a cloudy cloudiness in both eyes. It's normally bilateral.
Trauma and infection, often will be unilateral, and you can put fluoresce on there and see if it is ulcerated and the cornea itself, and see edoema can look like the, lipid corneal deposits as well. Culture and sensitivity, if it's not responding, but, off-license use of fusitalamic ointment or chlorophenacol, is. Putting your frogs on a diet, believe it or not, can work, but it needs to be very slow and very, kind of long term dietary adjustment because if you do starve, an obese frog, hepatic lipidosis is an issue.
In terms of therapeutics then, just very quickly to summarise, I know we're running low on time. Most things are, are off licence, not a lot of, medications and things that are licenced for use in amphibians. If we're talking about fluid therapy, you know, we often need to need to restore, fluids and rehydrate these animals when they come in.
If they haven't been eating in a while, they can be dehydrated. So you can use ringer solution, with dextrose, 200 mL and 800 mL solution of ringers and 5% dextrose to give them a a shallow bath, especially if they're compromised, don't put them in deep water, and they can actually drown. So be careful with that.
If we're assist feeding, we want to do it as little as possible, so we want to use quite a concentrated. Feeding formula, critical care formula carnivore, is, is one, a very good one for, amphibians as well as some of the, Lefere vet MRA products that are designed for carnivores and provide all the amino acids they need. But we don't want to be doing that on a daily basis, because the stress can actually push those patients over the edge, and they don't do very well with a lot of handling.
In terms of analgesia, your opioids really are, the place to go. Don't tend to use many non-steroidals. So butorphenol or buprenorphine are the usual ones.
And again, look at the dosages and indications in the exotic formularies. And an important note on disinfection if we are doing surgery is to use dilute chlorhexidine, don't use poidone iodine, which is an irritant to the skin. Anaesthesia and euthanasia is difficult to get right, no more so now because the old staple of MS 222, the availability of that is, is quite difficult and restricted nowadays.
But that is the kind of more reliable method of anaesthesia and euthanasia. And basically use a 1 gramme per litre solution. Put them in it for up to 30 minutes.
Sometimes it takes for them to reach the desired plane and the writing reflex if we turn them over on the back, often is, is the way to, determine whether they're, whether they're at a deep kind of anaesthesia level, plane of anaesthesia. In in place of MS 222 now, if we can't get that, there is a product called Aquice which I've used a few times, which is a little trickier to get as reliable results, but does work. We want to, oxygenate the skin and, and, and keep the skin moist during anaesthesia, and we also want to keep them at the right temperature because if they're too cool, you know, it can take a long time for drugs to wear off or take effect.
We want to use pure dechlorinated water to recover because they're relying on excreting those compounds from the skin into the water, base to, to, in order to kind of clear them from the system. A Doppler probe monitor can be useful in some of your, larger species, and, sometimes you can use water in an iso or CO induction chamber, to, to induce them as well. But that is less reliable and, and a longer recovery time.
I think that's it really kind of as a brief overview. If anyone does have specific questions or case studies or things they want to come back to me with in the future, my contact details are there. But if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer them now.
Sean, that was absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for yet again a an an amazing webinar. Thank you.
Yeah, it's really amazing. I, I'm not convinced that I would be brave enough to to handle them or treat them if somebody came into the practise with one. I think, yeah, if it was if it was a prolapse, that's I've had a lot of vets like ring up and say, I've got a frog with a prolapse, what do I do?
It's like, just treat a prolapse, take care of handling the the patient, you know. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's it.
You know, as we were talking before we went on air, it's it's all about husbandry, you know, and if you can get that right, you can, you can do a lot for them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Right, we've had no questions coming through. I think everybody is as stunned as I am about this. And but it was absolutely fascinating.
So Sean, thank you for your time. We really appreciate it and we look forward to the opportunity of listening to you again in the future. Great.
Thanks a lot for everyone for joining us. Thanks everybody. Good night and to Lewis in the background, thanks for all your help.
Good night everybody.