Over the years, various posts on social media have claimed that some female frogs play dead to avoid giving birth. Although the behavior can be closely related to the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), commonly called a possum in North America, there are other animals that, well, “play possum.”
Biologists call behavior “tonic immobility,” or sometimes “thanatosis.” Until recently, it was associated almost exclusively with hunting animals that died escaping predators, as was the case with the possum.A temporary frog) was still studying he showed self-control during marriage. He published his findings in a newspaper Royal Society Open Science on October 11, 2023.
Dittrich told Snopes via Zoom that A temporary frog it is a “big burst” frog, meaning that it reproduces in a short window of the year, with thousands of frogs congregating in one place at the same time. In these species, males often outnumber females and harass and force entry to hugwhich is a technical term used for mating with aquatic animals. Research prior to Dittrich’s study had shown that female frogs in explosive reproductive species are sterile during mating, but he found the exact opposite.
In fact, at first Dittrich did not study women’s behavior at all. The experiment he conducted was to see if male frogs had a size preference when choosing mates – that is, did they prefer a larger or smaller mate? In the experiment, one male was placed in a box filled with 5 cm (2 inches) of water with two females of different sizes, and their behavior was recorded on a webcam for an hour.
“But they weren’t showing size preference,” Dittrich said.
Instead, Dittrich observed three strategies that female frogs frequently used to avoid mating: body rotation, mating call mimicry, and tonic immobility. Drifting away from the male was a very common strategy – since amplexus must emerge with the male behind and above the female, the females would turn on their backs to push the male frogs underwater. Dittrich reported that behavior in 83% of fertile women, and it was often the first strategy tried.
If the rotation was not successful, 48 percent of the females began to mimic mating calls, as if to communicate, “I’m a male frog, not a female frog.” Tonic immobility was the last option – 33% of the stiff female frogs stiffened their limbs, with “arms and legs stretched away from the body after being stimulated by the male.”
Interestingly, smaller frogs were more likely to enter tonic immobility than larger frogs. Dittrich suggested that this may be because tonic immobility is not a state of consciousness, but a response to high levels of stress. Younger women may be younger, less experienced and more vulnerable to stress than older women, and thus may show tonic immobility.
Lindsey Swierk, an assistant research professor at New York’s Binghamton University who was not involved in the study, told Snopes in an email that she thought Dittrich’s study was a good look at how female jumping frogs avoid dangerous situations.
“Many male and female balls are bad and can kill women,” she wrote. “Part of why I like this study is because it brings attention to the fact that women are not just ‘sitting ducks’ in explosive reproductive systems.”
Swierk said he has never seen tonic immobility in the frog species he works with (Forest frog), but he has seen females avoid and escape their mates in other ways. He also questioned the effectiveness of tonic immobility as an avoidance strategy, pointing out that some species of frogs still try to mate with females that are clearly dead. Dittrich also pointed out the limitations of his research, explaining that the laboratory area of his experiments is far from a natural reservoir.
The findings placed the common European frog in a small group of animals that went into tonic immobility during mating. Previous research has described similar responses to a spider (It’s a very nice bathroom), a newt (Pleurodeles waltl) and a revenge (Aeshna juncea). But some people were attracted to the behavior that Dittrich described for another reason: Hpeople are always more like animals than we like to believe.
“I’ve seen comments online of people saying things like ‘it feels like home,'” Dittrich said.
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Dittrich, Carolin, and Mark-Oliver Rödel. “Drop Dead! Avoiding a Wife’s Mate in a Hot Frog.” Royal Society Open Sciencestrength. 10, no. 10, Oct. 2023, p. 230742. DOI.org (Crossref)https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230742.
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