Here are some very horny, very confused male wood frogs.
They have ignored every vocal and chemical signal available, and they think they’ve found a female frog. Unfortunately, they are attempting to make sweet sweet amplexus with a tiger salamander.
The herpetologists who captured the photo suggest that since wood frogs have an incredibly short breeding season, they may not have evolved more complex methods of choosing a mate than the snatch-and-grab. If so, they could be more likely to make mistakes than frog species with more complex courtship.
Maybe that Kermit-Miss Piggy romance isn’t so weird after all.
UPDATE 9/1/2015: Or the new Kermit-Denise relationship. Guess that frog’s just got a thing for pigs.
Photo: S. Olson and M. Patchell
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