Female Frogs Sometimes Pretend to Be Dead Just to Avoid Unwanted Mates

Watch Female Frogs Sometimes Pretend to Be Dead Just to Avoid Unwanted Mates - Amaze Lab on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00When women are harassed on the street they might avoid eye contact or wear headphones to drown it

00:08all out and in the animal kingdom it turns out female frogs also have a tactic to avoid incessant

00:13males they fake their own deaths a new study has uncovered the practice and they say this changes

00:18a lot of what we thought we knew about frogs previously experts believe that females would

00:22simply submit during mating season during what are often referred to as mating balls or where

00:27a large number of frogs clump up with many males vying and competing for mates and as many as six

00:32males can crowd onto one female this is where the female's death veins and other tactics come into

00:37play with the researchers saying quote we observed three female avoidance behaviors namely rotation

00:43release calls and tonic immobility death feigning most females 83 percent would attempt to twist

00:49their bodies to get away from their mates a further 48 percent would use release calls where they would

00:53actually mimic the sounds of males and 25 percent would then fake their own death until released

00:58with the researchers finding that it worked better than other means especially for smaller female frogs