amphibian identity crisis

Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
-Matsuo Basho, 1686

The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!
-Alan Watts, translation

For 31 translations, try here.

Cold-blooded;

Ancient (evolving nearly 200 million years ago, they walked among the dinosaurs);

Fish out of water, sort of (they’re the first four-footed ancestors of fish, the earth’s original tetrapods);

The first land animals with vocal chords;

And that it’s not the females but the males who talk a lot (owing to those expandable air sacs at their throats);

Revered in cultures as diverse as India and Peru, Egypt and ancient Greece and Rome;

Of two worlds, creatures of land and water;

Can leap 20 times their body length;

Range in size from ½ inch to a foot-long 7-pounder;

Comprise more than 4,900 species worldwide (not counting many that scientists haven’t discovered yet).

Fertilize their eggs outside the female’s body in most species;

That this happens during a mating embrace called amplexus;

They’re exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, invasive species, pollution and pesticides and a host of other human activities.

Please, won’t you love a frog today?

Do you ever confuse the inside of your head for the whole wide world of possibility?

Tibetan Buddhist holy man Patrul Rinpoche told the story of an old frog who had lived all his life in a dank well.

One day a frog from the sea paid him a visit.

“Where do you come from?" asked the frog in the well.

“From the great ocean," he replied.

“How big is your ocean?"

“It's gigantic!“

“You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?”

“Bigger."

“Bigger? You mean half as big?"

“No, even bigger."

“Is it as big as this well?"

“There's no comparison!”

“That's impossible! I've got to see this for myself."

They set off together.

When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces.

The place is wo(manned) by Margaret Roach, Frogboy Mama, and Anastasia Smith, Head Frog Stylist. No experiments or tests were performed on live frogs in the making of this blog.

May 30, 2009 - January 3, 2010 'Frogs: A Chorus of Colors' reopens at the American Museum of Natural History (where you'll be able to check out the handsome boy above).