What is Digg?Sponsored by Dragon Age: Origins
Can't get enough Dragon Age: Origins? Play the flash game. view!
DragonAgeJourneys.com - Play the free companion flash game to Dragon Age: Origins.
49 Comments
- spiritflare1, on 06/25/2009, -4/+43oh..thought it was the French.
- CoD4, on 06/25/2009, -5/+29This polish scientist is doing a research on frogs jumping.
He managed to make a frog jump by saying Jump!
So he concludes,
With 4 legs, the frog jumped 4 feet
With 3 legs, the frog jumped 3 feet
With 2 legs, the frog jumped 2 feet
With no legs, the frog lost its hearing - goobly, on 06/25/2009, -1/+21"The Curious Case of the Missing Frogs' Legs" sounds like an Encyclopedia Brown mystery to me.
- vorda, on 06/25/2009, -0/+17Frogs are always cool. Like, never has there been a frog hopping towards me, and I thought, 'Man, I better play dead. Here comes that frog.' I've never said, 'Here comes that frog' in a horrifying manner. It's always optimistic, like, 'Hey, here comes that frog -- fantastic! Maybe he will settle near me.'
- Mitch Hedberg - TexMexRex, on 06/25/2009, -1/+12This does not support my agenda therefor it is false.
- mikemil828, on 06/25/2009, -1/+8Just goes to show that contrary to what VHEMT sympathizers think big bad humanity isn't always the cause for all the issues in Nature, sometimes nature does weird stuff that we have yet to fully comprehend, and to automatically assume that it is always our fault for everything is both arrogant and foolish.
- cygnus2112, on 06/25/2009, -1/+7Dragonfly nymph says, "Mmm... tastes like chicken!"
- RadicalEdward, on 06/25/2009, -0/+6RIP mitch.
- diggB, on 06/25/2009, -1/+6A ribbitting article.
- bastardx, on 06/25/2009, -0/+4Ok. Now solve the two-headed snake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p32dS1gvDHQ - CivicTV, on 08/14/2009, -0/+4SCIENCE!
- CaptOblivious, on 06/25/2009, -0/+3what?
- dafragsta, on 06/25/2009, -0/+3Clearly that's satan's handywork.
- CaptOblivious, on 06/25/2009, -0/+3How DARE those damn scientists not blame humanity for the poor beleaguered frogs fate!
(yes, /s) - etx313, on 06/25/2009, -0/+3I'll buy it off you. I'm thinking about becoming a super hero.
- AndrewMoyer, on 06/25/2009, -0/+2http://www.sadtrombone.com/
- coondog35, on 06/26/2009, -0/+2Al Gore is going to be pissed.
- LordStryker, on 06/25/2009, -0/+2There is a 'reply' link. Use it.
- overtoke, on 06/25/2009, -0/+2certain toxins do have specific associated birth defects which can be attributed to them
- pegothejerk, on 06/25/2009, -0/+2Apparently you could not have. Now you might have rather not, but those are not the same thing.
- protogenxl, on 06/25/2009, -0/+2Nom Nom Nom Nom
-Dragonfly Nymph - GiggleStick, on 06/25/2009, -0/+2It was this guy:
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Doc_Hopper - Moralogic, on 06/25/2009, -0/+2Because the truth is actually important.
- lewscroo, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1Great, now I can dump my 55-gallon drum of toxic waste into my pond without fear. Yippie!
- kaelyiesta, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1"they didn't bother explaining what has happened to the frog population globally. they didn't bother explaining why there was such a noticeable increase in the 'deformities' in question."
Is this happening globally? I can't find much to answer this simple question, and it would be interesting to see if areas with higher pollution correlate with higher rates of mutation. Also, is there an increase in deformities? Again, I don't see research data on this. I just see a lot of sensational and generalized news articles.
Lastly, your first paragraph makes no sense. That a scientist concludes a sufficient reason for some event that is already known does not necessarily mean his answer isn't enough and that there is still a 'mystery' to be solved. For example, suppose I did some rigorous and complete tests to prove certain properties of gravity. Would they be incomplete just because I gave a single answer, and that answer was already widely known? Of course not. There may be other reasons such a study would be insufficient, but not because the answer was public opinion and that I only provided one conclusion. Such things have no bearing on a theory one way or another. - biogears, on 06/25/2009, -1/+2I thought it was acid rain, SUVs and George Bush !
This frog thing use to be a regular gloom-n-doom news item, now we're on to new ones. - relay2005, on 06/25/2009, -2/+3Actually this makes more sense then global warming or even toxins because if it were toxins you would see more then limbs missing. T
- cbatt1625, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1I wonder if frog legs from a one legged frog taste as good as from a two legged frog?
- MisterEX, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1@overtoke
The study did not completely rule out toxins. The article said, it is not necessary to have such chemical pollutants to understand this current phenomenon. - GamerX, on 06/25/2009, -2/+3Easy: the frogs sold their missing feet on the black market, in order to grab some money for paying the mortgage of their homes
- DocHoliday22, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1Yeah... I've always wondered about this...
- nextekcarl, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1I didn't know frogs were so spiteful.
- hasslinthehoff, on 06/25/2009, -1/+2Shhh... don't tell Al Gore.
- SacraBos, on 06/25/2009, -1/+2This is simply evolution at work. Lots of people like to eat Frog Legs. Frogs without legs don't get eaten by people, creating an evolutionary advantage for the frog to have no legs. Unless we stop eating Frog Legs, legless frogs will tend to have longer survival rates, leading to increasing numbers.
- jba68, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1I hope so but does this mean portions shrink :(
- patternhop, on 08/15/2009, -0/+1The study by Ballengee and Sessions puts forward an interesting potential explanation for some types of frog deformities. Unfortunately, their research fails to live up to the media hype; it does not solve the mystery of deformed frogs. In the laboratory, they found that some dragonfly larvae will remove limbs of tadpoles. However, Ballengee and Sessions did not actually test the predictions of the dragonfly hypothesis with rigorous data from the field. For example, a clear prediction of their hypothesis is that as the frequency of dragonfly larvae in wetlands increases, the frequency of missing-limb deformities in those wetlands is also expected to increase. Ballengee and Sessions did not test this prediction. Testing such predictions is a fundamental component of science. Until there are well-designed studies that examine the relationship between dragonfly density and frogs with missing limbs in nature, the relative importance of the role of predation in amphibian deformities will remain unknown.
- CaptOblivious, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1I could have lived my entire life without knowing that.
- chedonline, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1OM NOM NOM NOM
- youannoyme, on 06/25/2009, -0/+1You seem to misunderstand the nature of evolution. Most people make the mistake of saying random changes in the genome could never spontaneously create the complexity we see, forgetting the directed force natural selection puts on the system. You seem to imply evolution will automatically move a species "forward", whatever that means in individual cases, while neglecting the fact that specific adaptations first require a very random mutation to have to take place.
Random mutation adds variety, and is...well...random. Natural selection takes that and causes the traits that are currently "better" to be retained. Both are necessary, and in addition, a specie is not guaranteed to evolve rather than go extinct.
Besides, the article talks about how they develop a poison defense as soon as possible in their main torso. Sounds like natural selection has already been at work on this problem, seeing as having your leg ripped off is infinitely better than being eaten whole, at least in reproductive contexts. - Nekateman, on 06/25/2009, -4/+4Another polish scientist is doing research on CoD4 saying jokes.
He managed to make CoD4 say a specific frog joke when he saw or heard the word frog.
So he concludes,
joke sucks after 4th grade. - inactive, on 06/25/2009, -0/+0What mystery? They got sick of peopleeating their legs so hey evolved to have none.
- inactive, on 06/25/2009, -0/+0*****, aliens did it
- nullcodes, on 06/25/2009, -2/+2Probably nobody until the 1980's acquired paranoid schizophrenia and decided to survey the counts of deformities and then get into a hissy fit over it.
Show me a global frog deformity survey from .. say the 1930. Also this parasite may have been localised until globalization. - pegothejerk, on 06/25/2009, -1/+1Aimee Mullins hops to the rescue!
Okay I just got a new fetish I never knew I could have. - dukeeeey, on 06/25/2009, -2/+1french probably ate them all
- BaldOuting, on 06/25/2009, -3/+2i agree with the above there may be more than one reason for this. also, shouldn't natural evolution help the frogs? maybe they would have extra limbs to survive if they lose a leg, but to already start with a missing leg puts them at a severe natural disadvantage.
- sdipaola, on 06/25/2009, -3/+1agreed if it is a natural parasite that is generally been around - why is there a world wide uptake of deformities, often with systemic problems what you die of (HIV and illnesses) or get deformed from is the result not the cause. So why are frogs more susceptible to parasites than before.
- tekproxy, on 06/25/2009, -5/+1Burried for being old news posted as breaking discovery.
- overtoke, on 06/25/2009, -10/+5This is far from a solved mystery... they name 1 reason frogs are missing legs and it turns out to be something we've known about for a long time. they name 1 reason frogs have extra limbs and it turns out to be something we've known about for a long time.
they didn't bother explaining what has happened to the frog population globally. they didn't botherh explaining why there was such a noticeable increase in the 'deformities' in question.
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is