{"id":227,"date":"2020-08-05T11:53:14","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T15:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/bmosher1-fieldherp\/?p=227"},"modified":"2020-08-05T11:53:14","modified_gmt":"2020-08-05T15:53:14","slug":"tossed-salad-with-a-side-of-frogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/bmosher1-fieldherp\/2020\/08\/05\/tossed-salad-with-a-side-of-frogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Tossed salad with a side of frogs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Hannah Ladner<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone has heard their fair share of ghost stories but here is a story that you may not have heard.  In the Salinas Valley in California, there are seemingly endless agriculture fields that are plagued by an unstoppable horde.  On dark misty nights, these creatures will emerge from the irrigation canals and ditches lining the fields and move into the vast fields of lettuce and spinach.  When the sun comes up, these creatures take refuge in the greens and the growers return to their crops.  Then, they are unknowingly harvested, packaged, and sent to terrorize unwitting, innocent consumers!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this tale is an exaggeration,\nits basis lies in fact.  Every year,\nthere are a number of cases where people purchase pre-packaged vegetables from\nstores only to discover that an animal, often a frog, toad, or lizard, is also\nenclosed.  This isn\u2019t a common\noccurrence, there are only a couple of incidents a year, but when mainstream\nnews hears about it, it often goes viral. \nBetween 2004 and 2018, there have been at least 40 incidents where an\nanimal has been found, with most of these (75%) being amphibians or\nreptiles.  In 9 of these cases, the\nstowaways were alive and intact, allowing for the people who found them to\nrelease them or keep them as pets.  This\nis a serious issue because of the risks of spreading disease to na\u00efve wildlife\npopulations or even cross breed with native species. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo Credit: Christina Carrington, HuffPost <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Despite lacking hard data on the true scale of the issue, the Salinas Valley lettuce growers knew something had to be done and they assembled a team.  Dr. Danny Hughes was one of these researchers brought in to determine how to reduce the frequency of these incidents.  In the past, Dr. Hughes has been involved in research on evolution and ecology studying species including leopard frogs, African burrowing snakes, and the Central African forest chameleon.  The main concerns that he had were how to keep tree frogs out of the salad fields, how to apply knowledge of frog ecology to develop better harvesting practices, how this issue may be contributing to the spread of disease, and how to better keep track of future incidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n