Fearless frogs feast on deadly hornets

by Kobe University
December 4, 2025

A remarkable resistance to venom has been discovered in a frog that feasts on hornets despite their deadly stingers. This frog could potentially serve as a model organism for studies on mechanisms underlying venom tolerance.

While just the sight of a hornet’s stinger is enough to fill many of us with dread, some animals, such as some birds, spiders and frogs, are known to prey on adult hornets. The venom injected by their stingers can cause sharp, intense pain as well as local tissue damage and systemic effects such as destruction of red blood cells and cardiac dysfunction, which may even be fatal. But whether the animals that hunt hornets are able to tolerate the venomous stings, or just manage to avoid them, has remained unclear. “Although stomach-content studies had shown that pond frogs sometimes eat hornets, no experimental work had ever examined how this occurs,” says Kobe University ecologist SUGIURA Shinji.

To test whether frogs avoid or tolerate these potentially deadly hornet stings, Sugiura presented individual adult pond frogs with workers of three hornet species, Vespasimillima, V. analis, and V. mandarinia, under laboratory conditions. Each frog was used only once, and was matched to fit the size of their prospective hornet prey, with larger frogs preferentially matched with Asian giant hornet (V. mandarinia) prey.

In the journal Ecosphere, Sugiura submits striking evidence that adult pond frogs actively attacked workers of the three hornet species. What’s more, he also reports that 93%, 87%, and 79% of frogs ultimately consumed V. simillima, V. analis, and V. mandarinia, respectively, despite being stung into the mouth or even into the eyes. “While a mouse of similar size can die from a single sting, the frogs showed no noticeable harm even after being stung repeatedly. This extraordinary level of resistance to powerful venom makes the discovery both unique and exciting,” says Sugiura.

Keep reading: https://www.kobe-u.ac.jp/en/news/article/20251204-67323

Read the Ecosphere paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.70457