Posted on 02/27/2024 1:18:49 PM PST by Red Badger
Frog mating can be a competitive and sometimes deadly affair as many males compete for females – but females have some tricks to avoid unwanted attention
Male frogs commonly coerce female frogs into mating, but some females have come up with ways to avoid harassment – including playing dead.
Many frog species, including the European common frog (Rana temporaria), only have a short window of a few weeks each year to mate. This means that lots of males simultaneously compete for the attention of females, sometimes leading to deadly clashes as individuals are submerged under a competing group of males.
“It could be that there are several males clinging to one female, which often leads to the death of the female,” says Carolin Dittrich at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Germany.
Now, Dittrich and her colleagues have found that female common frogs employ a few different tactics to evade males.
The team collected common frogs during the breeding season – 96 females and 48 males – and placed one male and two differently sized females in a box filled with 5 centimetres of water. The frogs were then allowed to move freely for 1 hour while the team recorded their behaviour.
Of the 54 female frogs that were embraced by a male as part of the mating process, 83 per cent rotated away, making it the most common escape tactic.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
C’mon, boys. Brrraaaap means Brrraaaap.
I just knew this thread would be entertaining...:)
N-S = Non Sense.
Hah, that was funny!
Imagine that. Female hoomans do the very same thing.
Absolutely nothing at all.
Having attended TCU, this explains a lot of my college days !!
I was literally in the bush, in the wilderness lol.
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