Baby Yoda is Coming to Eat You! (Let’s Talk about Frogs.)

Not much is known about Yoda’s species, despite decades of Star Wars lore. We learn what’s on screen but little more, despite hundreds upon hundreds of books and comics. Like the Force, Yoda a mystery is.

But we learned something key about Yoda’s species in the 8 episodes of The Mandalorian. They eat frogs.

Lots of earth cultures feature frogs on the menu. Frog legs, for example are a delicacy of French cuisine. In southeastern France, cuisses de grenouille are a traditional dish that uses the hind legs with the lower part of the spine, prepared with butter, flour, garlic, and parsley, giving the frog legs a taste and texture similar to that of a young chicken.

Aztecs were known to be partial to frog legs and they aren’t uncommon in areas of the United States, like Louisiana. They were a common foodstuff in southern China as early as the first century AD. Bullfrogs are farmed in certain regions of China, where they are usually stir fried and mixed with light spices.

There was even a brief period where frog legs were considered a delicacy in Britain. They were imported in 1908 by the renowned French chef Auguste Escoffier at a grande soirée in honor of the Prince of Wales, who served up a dish he called Cuisses de Nymphe a l’Aurore, which roughly translates to Thighs of the Dawn Nymphs.

The “Nymph Thighs,” which Escoffier cooked in a bouillon with aromatic herbs, cooled, then doused with a paprika sauce and decorated with taragon leaves before being covered with chicken jelly, became a surprise culinary hit. But frog legs quickly fell out of favor with the British, who now insult the French by calling them frog-eaters.

The Mandalorian depicted Baby Yoda eating his frogs whole, bone and all. It was even implied that to fetch him some food meant fetching him something with bones in it.

There are earth analogues for this as well. In fact, live-food connoisseurs actually believe meat tastes better if the animal is still alive. Hey, it’s gross to me, but for some there is no such thing as too fresh.

From chilled ants, jumping shrimp, wormy cheese, or fruit bat soup, many cultures have dishes that are served not long after the animal gasped its last breaths. Relevant to our particular culinary conversation is frog sashimi, a dish of live frogs served up filleted with their hearts still beating, and occasionally while their limbs are still moving. Sounds like a dish for Baby Yoda.

I’m sure there were froggy things in the swamps of Dagabah, so ate a frog, Yoda most certainly did. We’ve canonically seen Yoda’s teeth, so we can deduce that a bone-in frog isn’t a problem for Yoda’s species.

Paleontologists deduce the eating habits of extinct animals by analyzing the shape of their teeth. Consider how us humans use our own teeth: Our front incisors are knifelike and used to tear large pieces of food, while our canines act like stabbing knives. Our back molars are relatively flat and used to crush and grind chunks of food.

Humans are omnivores with a versatile set of teeth. Predators tend to have more prominent incisors and canines than we do, while herbivores tend to have more prominent molars that allow extensive grinding to release nutrients from tough plant matter.

Yoda’s teeth in the movies look quite human, if well worn, with visible incisors and canines. So, Yoda is likely an omnivore, assuming his species has molars in the back. We saw him chew his glimmer stick and make vegetable stew on Dagaboh, but frogs and snakes could have been a possibility.

So, what did we learn here? Well, Baby Yoda eating a frog isn’t that weird after all. Before we call it gross and shame him into spitting it out, let’s remember that it’s a big galaxy with lots of cultures. And, yes, many of them eat frogs.