this is possibly graphic and disturbing, or maybe not depending on what the answer to my question is.
I want to know whether the frogs are indeed alive like the (possibly troll) description says or merely twitching and stuff because they’re so fresh.
Edited title to indicate subject.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I would consider the frog that is thrashing about with the rear of its body severed to be still alive. The brain has not been destroyed. Although the front part of the body has been disconnected from the heart and internal organs, it will take some time for the brain to die.
Well, this young constable has definitely just thrown up into his helmet…
Is the frog in a box?
I knew a physiology researcher who used frog leg muscle for his work. He threw out nearly a quarter of all preps due to encysted parasite larva.
I eat lots of raw food, but raw amphibian/reptile would make me nervous.
I can’t bring myself to watch it, but there are several possibilities: it may be that there’s some acidic sauce involved, which can cause muscle spasms in recently killed tissue (this is apparently the “secret” behind an octopus meal which appears to be a live octopus. It isn’t, but the acidic sauce causes the tentacles to twitch.) It may be that, since a frog has a fairly simple nervous system, there is still the ability for involuntary muscle movements, with no consciousness (whatever that means when you’re a frog) left.
Or it may be alive. Which means about as much as when you’re a frog and you’re eaten by a bird or snake or alligator…many animals are at least partly alive when they’re eaten by everything but humans.
If you watched it, you would see that this is not the case. Frogs used in dissections in anatomy class are routinely pithed (have their brains destroyed). The heart continues to beat, and the muscles may twitch. Even detached legs will twitch under the circumstances you describe. But while the body is still alive, the animal is brain dead.
The frog in the video has not been pithed, and does not appear to be brain dead. The body has been severed behind the front legs, but the front part seems to be under nervous control. You really need to watch the video in order to comment on it. (However, it is quite disturbing, even to me who has dissected any number of frogs, so I wouldn’t recommend it.)
It’s possible that the frog is in shock and is “unconscious” (whatever unconsciousness may mean to a frog), but there is no reason to assume that.
For those who don’t want to watch it (and I don’t blame you, but I can’t un-watch it now) - the video depicts a cook grabbing a large frog by the loose skin on its back, then piercing it through the belly with a large knife, then gutting and preparing it.
The presentation of the dish is a bowl containing chunks of raw frog meat and vegetables, garnished with what appears to be the intact front half of the frog. the frog is seen to blink several times, then later, to move its front legs in a grasping, crawling sort of motion, which looked to me to be a little too coordinated to be attributable to random twitching.
It’s worth acknowledging that limb coordination is often a distributed (i.e. not entirely brain) function in some animals - not sure if that includes frogs.
On balance though, I’d say there is sufficient reason to consider the frog in this video as still dying - not actually dead.
The animal didn’t exactly seem to be in a state of panic or distress, but frogs aren’t highly expressive anyway - and without its lungs or hind legs, there is limited scope for it to display distress.
Yeah, I’m not particularly sentimental about food, but…I think this is one of those rare cases which, notwithstanding our communal raison d’être, I think I’ll remain blissful in my ignorance. 
Me too, I have eaten tons of frog legs, fry em up fresh add some cayenne pepper nom. I know better than to eat a swamp critter raw, swamps are, well special.
Capt
I’ve no objection to eating frog - it’s nice, but we’re talking about causing inhumane suffering for no other reason than to create an interesting garnish.