Mysteries of Frog Sex

No, this post is not about French people making love. Hopefully it is way more interesting (and less odorous) than that. We'll see.

Recently I had a conversation with one of my favorite people on Earth. (ok, so all the people I know are on Earth. I admit I don't have any favorites that aren't on Earth. My therapist has convinced me that those people are not real and that I shouldn't talk about them, so forget I said anything.)

Anyway, this person and I usually talk about many subjects, and I'm always fascinated with the course of the conversation. And this particular conversation was no exception, as we touched on everything from music to literature to dimply ass cheeks.

At one point, however, the topic of discussion somehow turned to frog sex, and where I feel one can never examine too closely the steamy intricacies of sex between two frogs (or more than two, if that's their particular kink), it occurred to me that there was something about amphibians that I didn't know. Indeed there was something about our watertight friends that I had never even considered.

Now you all no doubt know me as a man of the world by now. After all, I've posted all of 3 entries on this blog; a number I deem sufficient for anyone to grasp the true nature of my character. If you can't tell by now that I'm always out there on the scene, you're just not paying attention. Plus, as a kid, I would ride my bike through the woods all day, play in the bayous for hours, terrorize insects and small animals, and pretend I was a ballerina named Sasha (another gem my therapist and I are working on), so I was surprised that this particular aspect of sweet froggy love had never crossed my mind.

Baby frogs are tadpoles, but are baby toads tadpoles?

Incredibly, I wasn't sure. So I thought I would do some research on the Internet. And the information I found was absolutely remarkable.

The answer is No. At least according to the mind-bogglingly brilliant sources I found among the throng of forums and websites dedicated to the science of amphibious creatures.

Apparently, toads arise spontaneously from certain fungi. Yes, toadstools. So named because early researchers erroneously thought they were the product of the toads' stools, whereas the "stools" were not so much bowel movements as a release of spores.

Of couse it turns out to be the other way around. The fungi actually release the spores, and we can say conclusively which came first in this arena (the stool or the toad), where the chicken and egg debate unfortunately rages on to this day.

And, toads are not technically amphibians at all, but due to the specifics of their abiogenesis, they are mushrooms. When you pick them up, they "urinate" a form of sap (ok, not sap technically, because they are not plants, but more of a slimy mold) all over your hand.

The amazing thing is this slimy mold is perfectly edible, and tastes like ripe strawberries.

Trust me. You should try it sometime.

In fact, it is the traditional French basis for hollandaise sauce, although in the US, misguided animal rights advocates have forced a recipe change.

And here's yet another interesting bit of froggy trivia: Toad DNA does not replicate, but is passed psychokinetically from organism to organism, through the use of zero-point energy technology.

It is reliably claimed that we will all be powering our automobiles by toad-DNA technology within our lifetime, assuming we live that long.



Fascinating, amazing stuff, isn't it?

What? . . . What are my sources? you ask.

Umm . . . I'll have to get back to you on that, as I'm currently too busy researching Geckos.