ranicide

English

Etymology

From Latin rāna +‎ -icide.

Pronunciation

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Noun

ranicide (uncountable)

1. The killing of a frog.
   • 1872, S[amuel] Reynolds Hole, “Mr Chiswick on Bedding-Out”, in The Six of Spades: A Book about the Garden and the Gardener, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, pages 147–148:

     Although the bereaved family—the brothers and sisters, for anything we know to the contrary, of the ill-fated flirt who perished so suddenly in the bloom of his youth and in his opera hat—had pleaded with tears for a verdict of ranicide, and a big deodand on the ox, no honest frog could have forgotten for a moment the plain demands of duty.

   • 1955 July 22, Alex Preston, “Frog Legs at $17.75 a Pair: Is Unlicensed Ranicide Illegal?”, in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, number 172, Fort Worth, Tex., page 6, column 4:

     At any rate, Warden Fred Hottle told Riddell—not in precisely these words—that unlicensed ranicide is illegal in Virginia.

   • 1974 October, Bruce K. Bernard, Ronald M. Paolino, “Biogenic Amines and Androgens in the Study of Aggressive Behavior”, in Psychopharmacology Bulletin, volume 10, number 4, pages 59–60, column 1:

     The experimental models used included isolation and shock-induced conspecific aggression, muricide (mouse-killing), and ranicide (frog-killing). […] In a series of experiments (8), testosterone was found to be neither an initiator nor a promoter of ranicide behavior in the adult male rat nor an inhibitor of ranicide in established killers. […] Similarly, exogenous testosterone given to animals demonstrating ranicide on the first testing session did not increase the rate at which these animals killed frogs compared to subjects that did not receive testosterone.

   • 1980, M. Girgis, L.G. Kiloh, editors, Limbic Epilepsy and the Dyscontrol Syndrome: […] , Elsevier/North-Holland Biomedical Press, →ISBN, page 113:

     McIntyre (personal communication) found no change in the mouse-killing patterns of rats post-kindling, and a more extensive study by Bawden and Racine found no changes in muricide, ranicide or intraspecific aggression of their post-kindled rats.

   • 1983, Edward C. Simmel, Martin E. Hahn, James K. Walters, editors, Aggressive Behavior: Genetic and Neural Approaches, →ISBN, page 168:

     The review covers both offensive and defensive aggression in a variety of animal models including muricide (mouse killing), ranicide (frog killing), isolation-induced, pain-induced, brain stimulation-induced, and intermale aggression.

   • 1984, Stephen T. Mason, “Catecholamines and vegetative behaviour”, in Catecholamines and Behaviour, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, section “Aggression”, page 333:

     Ranicide in rats was found to be reduced by injection of noradrenaline into the hypothalamus, as was muricide behaviour (Bandler, 1970). […] Other sites in the unspecified ‘ventral midbrain’ were also found (Bandler, 1971) at which noradrenaline administration in crystalline form served to facilitate predatory aggression (ranicide and muricide).

   • 1989, Robert Plutchik, Henry Kellerman, editors, The Measurement of Emotions, Academic Press, →ISBN, section “Predatory Attack”, page 272:

     This involves the study of attacks that one species directs to a member of another species. Examples of this type include mouse killing (muricide) or frog killing (ranicide) by the rat and attacks on locusts by mice.

Anagrams

• acridine