Frog Salad Surprise

image A lot of sites have been linking to this photo of a frog inside a bag of salad. Could the photo be real? Well, I don't think it's photoshopped, this being a case where it would be a lot easier to stick a frog inside a bag rather than go to the trouble of photoshopping it in. But there have been reported cases in the past of frogs showing up inside packaged salads. For instance, a few months ago (April 12, 2006) The Daily Telegraph in Australia reported a case:
A DEAD frog was an unwanted ingredient in a pre-mixed caesar salad a woman bought from a supermarket. Julie Lumber, who bought the salad from a Coles store in Brisbane at the weekend, said yesterday: ''I opened up the bag and the frog fell out on the side of the plate.
I don't think the photo here is from the Australian case. Also note that in the Australian case the frog was dead, which is a lot more believable. The frog here looks alive. However, I think it is possible that this is real. Although I'd be more comfortable listing this as real if there were some contextual details (such as when and where this photo was taken.) (Thanks to Doug Nelson for the link)

Animals Food

Posted on Thu Aug 10, 2006


Comments

If you look closely, there are blurry pixels around the <font color=green>frog</font>, giving proof of being photoshopped. Also, <font color=#004400>lettuce</font>, <font color=#004400>spinach</font>, and other greens are packed with nitrogen. If packed with oxygen, the frog could be really alive inside a bag of greens, but the oxygen would cause the greens to spoil faster. CO<font size=1>2</font> wouldn't work either, because it gets processed by the plants to change into O<font size=1>2</font>, which (as forementioned) causes <font color=brown>wilting</font>.

Please disprove(or simply try to). I'm interested in seeing other theories why it might/ might not be real. 😕
Posted by shootinshark  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  12:14 PM
Follow-up: It may be the bag that's blurry, therefore making Alex's theory the most viable.
Posted by shootinshark  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  12:17 PM
The picture may be real and the photographer could have opened the bag and put the frog there himself before taking the picture... 😕
Posted by Bouli  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  01:00 PM
Blurry pixels can also be caused by the image being compressed. i.e. being in jpg format.
Posted by The Curator  in  San Diego  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  02:20 PM
Mmmm frog salad... tastes just like chicken YUM!

They could have opened the back seam of the bag and inserted the frog for the pic 😛
Posted by oppiejoe  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  02:50 PM
there was a link in that blog to another blog with a video of the frog salad- but alas the video wasn't available any longer (it was on Youtube).
Posted by katey  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  03:46 PM
...The only real hint of it's origin is that the bag is in Spanish. "Fresh. Washed."
Posted by Maegan  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  04:19 PM
The bag is also inflated, so it probably hasn't been opened and the frog placed inside. I vote Photoshop.
Posted by Straight Outta Lynwood  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  05:09 PM
It's always better to find the whole frog before opening the bag than it is to find half the frog later.
Posted by Lonewatchman  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  05:41 PM
I once saw a living fly in an unopened package of Sweet Hearts at the grocery store.

Not as exciting, but gross none the less.
Posted by Meerkat  on  Thu Aug 10, 2006  at  07:37 PM
I'm no herpatologist but aren't there some species of frog that can go into a sort of suspended animation when the enviroment won't support them? If so, could this be one of them and went into suspended animation when the nitrogen got put into the bag?

And, I am not the Cole in Cole's if it is Cole's and not Coles. Never trust the punctuation in a news report.
Posted by Christopher Cole  on  Fri Aug 11, 2006  at  04:12 PM
Nope it is most definitely Coles. There should, however, be an apostrophe after the 's', but that just encourages people like my grandmother to call it Coleses =).
Posted by skribe  on  Sat Aug 12, 2006  at  12:12 AM
The photo must be from Spain, since "canonigos" (a watercress-like substance) are a popular salad green over here, mostly sold prewashed in plastic bags. As far as I know they don't use the word in Latin America.
Posted by John  on  Tue Aug 22, 2006  at  06:25 PM
I agree with John. Can't confirm if it's true of Florette (as I don't have any in the fridge at the moment - with or without frogs!) but a lot of salad sold in northern europe (UK at least) is grown in Spain and shipped up here.
However, the packaging is usually printed in English so I think this bag must have been for the spanish market.

Canonigos is what's usually known as Lambs Lettuce in England, but is also known as corn salad or salad mache.
Posted by Bryan  on  Sun Feb 17, 2008  at  06:50 AM
We just had a live frog jump out of our salad. The salad was purchased in a bag and while my wife was eating hers the frog crawled off of her plate! A little surprising.

So these stories are not made up!
Posted by Robert MacPhail  on  Sun Aug 08, 2010  at  07:10 PM
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