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Female frogs can play dead to avoid male attention.
This is confirmed by researchers in a new study.
Mating season risks becoming life-threatening for the females.
Things can get really wild when frogs are about to mate. It has caused female frogs to develop very special behavior, say researchers at the Natural History Museum in Berlin.
According to the study, which was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, is the mating season for common European frogs “intense and potentially dangerous”.
The males often become aggressive during the period. According to the study, they can “harass, coerce or intimidate” females into mating.
“Amazing behavior”
It can get so chaotic that the females get stuck in “mating balls” where several males cling to them. Something that can lead to death.
Smaller frogs can squirm out of the males’ grasp. But the researchers have also discovered an “amazing behavior” in the female frogs – they play dead to avoid male attention.
According to ecologist Carolin Dittrich, they extend their arms and legs in a manner similar to corpse stiffness.
She speaks up ABC News that there are few other studies that support vertebrates playing dead to avoid mating. The behavior has been observed in amphibians, spiders and dragonflies, but then the aim is usually to avoid predators.
Likes all females
During the study, the researchers also made other interesting discoveries.
They wanted to investigate whether male frogs chose females with larger bodies, because they tend to lay more eggs.
But the research results showed that the male frogs are not particularly fussy – rather, they seemed interested in all the females, according to Dittrich.