Why Frogs Are Too Smart to Stay in a Pot of Slowly Heating-to-Boil Water
By: William Seavey
Tags: Global Warming, Climate Change, Environment, Conservation, Nature

by William Seavey

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

There is an apocryphal tale that if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly heat it up until it boils, the frog will, before he knows it, suddenly cook.

It can’t be true because I know frogs, and they don’t like warm and certainly NOT hot water — they wouldn’t be in either one in the first place unless forced to be (cruel). And odds are they would escape.

Every spring or so I stop soaking in the hot tub I placed within an outdoor geodesic dome I built and pretty much abandon it to the frogs. The tiny tree frogs live in my backyard and were initially brought there from a nature reserve we have nearby. (But they were brought as tadpoles, scooped up in creek beds that were drying up and most likely doomed if I hadn’t rescued them.) Initially, I put them in trash barrels in which I collect rain water and there they thrived until they found my abandoned hot tub.

What I know about them is that they live anywhere there is a source of pure, preferably flowing water. They sense where the water is and they find it by squeezing under the trash barrel lids or, in the case of my hot tub, its insulated cover. I never cease to be surprised, however, when I find them.

Most recently I found a half dozen happily swimming in the quite cool hot tub and showed them off to my granddaughter Farrah, who immediately became fascinated. She asked me to catch one — rather difficult since they have good reaction times and jump really well — so that she could take it home with her. I explained that frogs MUST stay in or near cool water and that they eat very small insects. (Amazingly, one hopped into our living room a year or so ago and was residing in a planter. I suspected he wasn’t likely to find many insects, so I relocated him).

Frogs really do turn up in the strangest places.

When it’s time to drain and refill the now very cold hot tub before heating it up again, I leave open trash barrels nearby that they can, hopefully, survive in. (With the cover off before draining they get the message that they aren’t welcome anymore and start searching for a new home). I know this works because frogs have lived in my yard for over 10 years now, with no replenishment. And have survived our often very dry summers.

Maybe this commitment to the frogs’ survival is one reason I got the nickname “nature dude” when I worked for a summer camp years ago. I do honor nature and our yard of 1/3 acre is a coniferous forest with redwoods, Monterey Pine, cypress, and a eucalyptus tree and I love it. Occasionally we see wild turkeys, deer, and granddaughter Farrah swore she saw a rabbit when visiting the other day.

Anyway, it should be no surprise to anyone by now that if you heat a pot up with frogs in it they won’t cook before they realize it. They aren’t stupid.

Perplexing question: might humans?

_____William Seavey is the author of such books as AmeriCanada? (Cross Border Connections), Moving to Small Town America and How to Never Become Homeless. He lives in Cambria, CA near world famous Hearst Castle.