Three-headed frog ... not

The alleged three-headed frog

The BBC news
item, Puzzle
over three-headed frog (originally titled "'Warning' over three-headed
frog") spawned this story that swept the news media and the weblog circuit over
the week following March 5th 2004. Briefly: staff and pre-school children at
the Green Umbrella day nursery, Weston-super-Mare, UK, found the above. After
they'd taken photos and a video, it escaped and was never found. The BBC took
up the story, citing one of their own wildife experts, biologist and presenter
Mike Dilger, as "stunned" and saying "it could be an early warning of
environmental problems" (they published the same factoid in their
CBBC
Newsround children's section). From there, the tale snowballed to
newspapers worldwide. Here's a
slideshow
of images at local6.com, and videos appeared at CBS News and ITV
West. But was it really a three-headed frog, or a hoax as some have
suggested?

Short answer: neither. In my view, this is just
multiple amplexus, typical frog and toad mating
behaviour.

Amplexus
Mating of Anurans (frogs and toads)
involves the male tightly clasping the female - this is called amplexus - for
hours or even days, prior to externally fertilising her eggs. So we know what
we're talking about, first check out these images of
frog
amplexus. The grip is very strong; the male develops special pads on his
thumbs to hold on, and won't let go even if the couple is picked up and
handled. Axolotlman comments (merci aussi!) in this Les Monde des
reptiles thread,
Grenouille
tricéphale, that some frogs secrete during amplexus an adhesive
mucus so sticky that it's impossible to separate them without tearing the
skin.

Multiple amplexus
Commonly, more than one male grips the
same female. For comparison, see these very clear photos of a
frog
three-way and
frog
four-way, from David Jones' excellent photo-journal
Frog and Pond
Diary. Note the early March date of these: in southern England, frogs spawn
at this time of year, which supports the amplexus theory. With toads, multiple
amplexus can be be spectacularly weird, as toads generally have many more males
than females attempting to breed, My favourite so far is this wonderfully gross
picture of a toad mating ball involving at least six
toads (by HotShot - merci! - of the
Presence
PC forum).

So, the appearance of the
supposed three-headed frog is entirely consistent with multiple amplexus. Have
another look at David Jones' photo of

frogs in embrace, and then study the above. I interpret it as a smallish
female frog A being clasped by two larger male frogs B and C. The visible arms
belong to A; those of B and C are hidden because they're underneath clasping A
(though B's fingers are visible under A). The legs of A are hidden because it's
smaller than the frogs on top, though there are toes showing below the left
underside of C that may be A's left foot. There are four normal back legs in
view: both legs of C and the right leg of B are on the ground, while B's left
leg is lying on top of C.

Misinterpretation?
Amplexus has
been misinterpreted before by untrained observers, who didn't recognise it and
thought the animals were joined together. See this
article
by Bernd Heinrich mentioning how "a woman once brought a thus engaged wood
frog couple to [him], thinking it was a two-headed frog", and this
Massachusetts MetroWest Daily News report,
Girl
finds two-headed toad in Hopkinton, that turned out to be
Mating
toads, not mutants. In the Metro News story it's interesting to read
the complicated, and completely mistaken, analysis of the situation: "Its front
legs have grown into the back of the larger frog, and it appears the bottom jaw
may be connected to the larger toad's head". Eyewitness descriptions and
deductions, then, can be unreliable.

However, according to newspaper
accounts, this new case has also been endorsed by wildlife experts. I am
sceptical even of this, because it appears that the BBC's experts weren't given
the full picture and certainly haven't correlated all the available evidence.
One important point is that some of the photos clearly disprove the claim of
six legs (four at the back and two at the front). The Weston Mercury
picture with its account,
Six-eyed
monster, - and even more clearly, the Sun photo below -
Frog's a
triple jumper - show a further foreleg (apparently C's front left arm
unclasped). What appears to be two fingers of B's left hand are also
visible.

Other photos also show protruding digits suggesting
hidden limbs, such as this detail of C's left side with what's probably A's
left foot underneath.

One thing I find very strange is that there are no
pictures of the underside. The Sun photographs show someone was
perfectly capable of picking the frog{s) up, and it looks like deliberate
avoidance of a viewpoint that could disprove the six-legs description.


Other problems with three-headed frogs
If this were a three-headed
frog as photographed, it would require a completely unprecedented teratology. I
think the BBC experts would have difficulty justifying the combination of
circumstances.

1) Conjoined siblings are genetically the same
individual. There have never been any substantiated examples of non-identical
conjoining. These frogs are non-identical; the head and arms A are much
lighter in colour than B and C; and the back of C appears a slightly different
colour to B. (The occasional cases of apparently conjoined non-identical
multiples, such as the kittens picture half-way down
this
page, are generally considered to arise by their being stuck together after
birth by dried mucus, etc).
2) Although
triple
monsters have been described, the evidence mostly anecdotal. A
three-headed turtle
was reported from Taiwan in 1999, and there's another videoed on YouTube (here) but these appear to
be better described as a two-headed turtle - standard left-right bifurcation -
with an unclear structure - probably a stump of conjoined limb or shoulder bone
- between the heads. Two heads is as far as it goes; two-headed tadpoles have
been created in the laboratory (for instance, by exposure of embryos to lithium
or inducing overproduction of the wnt gene) and there's anecdotal
evidence of two-headed frogs observed in the wild. The US Geological Survey
Field Guide
to Malformations of Frogs and Toads (PDF format) has no examples, but I've
been sent one current example of a two-headed toad (see below).
3)
The angle of the alleged conjoining is wrong. Conjoined siblings are generally
joined - or branched - symmetrically about the body axis (the wnt gene
involved specifically causes left-right axial bifurcation). B and C might
conceivably be conjoined, but you don't get positioning like A, with the back
of one conjoined to the belly of the other.
4) If, as speculated, the
deformation was caused by pollution, it doesn't match known frog teratology
from this cause, which involves single individuals with problems such as
missing limbs, missing eyes and obviously abnormal extra limbs (the jury is
still out on the relative contributions of chemical pollution, infection by
parasitic
trematodes, and maybe UV levels). See the website of the
Minnesota Pollution
Control Agency for examples.
5) It seems vastly unlikely that
such a trio would manage the necessary feeding, locomotion and avoiding
predators to successfully grow from tadpole to adulthood.

Of related
interest: Kentaro Mori of the excellent Brazilian skeptics weblog
CetismoAberto kindly sent me
a reference to two-headed Surinam toad
for sale at a Tokyo rare aquatics shop for 498,750¥ (about $4600 /
£2500), and apparently found in the wild.

Why?
I have no
idea why this story has spread so dramatically, with the majority of news
sources copying it without critical or scientific analysis. The
Independent, as far as I can tell, was the only one to mention the
mating-frog possibility -
'Thee-headed
frog' leaves experts on the hop. Perhaps the environmental angle - mutation
caused by pollution - is the emotional hook. But there's also something very
mediaeval about it: monstrous births presaging disaster. In this Frogs.org
article,
Hidden
Agenda, Russell Wangersky points out the interplay of factors that can
drive a story like this (in fact, the previously mentioned two-headed toad
one). My inclination was to think that the BBC deserves a slap on the wrist for
rushing into publication without more stringent checking and then, unlike the
MetroWest DailyNews, failing to report counter-evidence. But then again,
this is an unimportant regional 'curiosity' story where lack of highly detailed
checking is understandable. I e-mailed them straight away, criticising the
facts of their coverage, but so far they've neither posted a follow-up, amended
the story, nor replied to me. If you're a herpetologist and agree with my
interpretation, maybe you could offer the BBC a reasoned
refutation.


It took about four years to get a reply.

Addendum: 14th April 2008 Approximately on the 4th anniversary of the story, I sent a further complaint to the BBC - and got a reply. Discussion, reproduced with permission, follows: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:11:10 +0100 / From BBC Mr Girvan, Thanks for your email: this is the first complaint about this story we have received to the best of my knowledge. The journalist who wrote the piece has left and is now in Australia. However, I have to go with the story as it stands: the lady from the nursery is convinced and convincing and the journalist ran it past an independent wildlife expert before publication. If you have proof to the contrary, please let me know. Regards (name redacted) BBC News Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:59:32 +0100 / From Ray Girvan Dear (name redacted), Thanks for your email: this is the first complaint about this story we have received to the best of my knowledge. Thanks also. In which case there has been something severely wrong with the BBC complaints system then, as I've been trying to get a reply via the BBC complaints system on and off for years. Yours is the first response I've ever had. However, I have to go with the story as it stands: the lady from the nursery is convinced and convincing and the journalist ran it past an independent wildlife expert before publication. If you have proof to the contrary, please let me know. Obviously "proof" either way is impossible now, but analysis of likelihood is still possible. Have a read of my web page on the matter: http://www.raygirvan.co.uk/apoth/trifrog.htm Some of the links are unfortunately dead - I'll see if I can find them archived - but the thrust of it is that this is a mistaken interpretation of common frog mating behaviour called "multiple amplexus" (i.e. multiple males clinging tightly to the female). There's a good video at Metacafe (http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1221565/three_headed_frog/). The problem, I think, was that the story wasn't sufficiently checked (I appreciate that it was an unimportant regional story that wouldn't have been of high enough priority for checking with multiple experts). I can't explain why the wildlife expert consulted didn't consider multiple amplexus as the obvious explanation, but as to the lady from the nursery: this is not an unprecedented kind of mistake, even with perfectly intellligent people. I've cited a couple of examples of lay persons thinking mating anurans are a single two-headed individual. All I'm asking is that you run this past some herpetologists - not just general wildlife experts - but people who specifically know frog and toad biology. Suggestions: * The Herpetology Hotline (see http://www.peabody.yale.edu/collections/vz/herpform.html); * The British Herpetological Society (http://www.thebhs.org/contact.html) *Peter Stafford (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/staff- directory/botany/cv-9110.html) who is editor of the Herpetological Bulletin See which they think is more likely: three-headed frog, or multiple amplexus? Sincerely, Ray Girvan Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:23:32 +0100 / From BBC Thanks for the reply Ray. I'll take your advice on board if this type of story crops up again. Rgds (Name redacted) Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:09:25 +0100 / From Ray Girvan Thanks for the reply Ray. I'll take your advice on board if this type of story crops up again. That's nice - but are you going to do anything about the story as it stands? (i.e. remove it, or at least get a herpetologist's opinion for balance). I needn't remind you of the BBC's editorial policy on accuracy (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/accuracy/ ) - "The BBC's commitment to accuracy is a core editorial value and fundamental to our reputation ... All the relevant facts and information should be weighed to get at the truth ... checking and cross checking the facts". That doesn't square with leaving up a story whose accuracy is very questionable, and ignoring the major relevant fact of a mundane explanation. Regards, Ray Girvan Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:11:56 +0100 / From BBC I don't think I am going to alter the story no: we got a wildlife expert's opinion at the time and it is balanced. Would you expect a newspaper to alter all its old copies if/when new information comes to light? Rgds (Name redacted) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:24:17 +0100 / From Ray Girvan I don't think I am going to alter the story no: we got a wildlife expert's opinion at the time and it is balanced. Would you expect a newspaper to alter all its old copies if/when new information comes to light? a) The web is not paper, and such amendments are both possible and routine for the BBC website. See the BBC's own The Editors blog ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/sniffing_out_edits.html) : "Our policy is to correct anything that´s wrong - spelling mistake, factual error or anything else - as soon as we become aware of it" -Steve Herrmann, Editor, BBC News website b) Even papers do print retractions / revisits to the topic if new evidence is available. Regards, Ray Girvan Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:03:10 +0100 / From BBC Hi Ray, Thanks for this. As I said, I've taken your comments on board for any future stories we write on this subject, but I don't think I am going to change the piece. If you want to take this further, I suggest you go through the BBC complaints procedure: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/ Thanks (Name redacted) And there the exchange stands. It's probably pointless to complain further at this stage, but it makes an interesting case study of how the BBC works in going against its own claimed guidelines - "All the relevant facts and information should be weighed to get at the truth ... checking and cross checking the facts" - to cling to a biologically stupid story. If you're a herpetologist and agree with me about the likely explanation, do contact the BBC. Maybe you can do better. , after reading this, I've convinced you that the BBC story is garbage, please contact them. The story address is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/3534361.stm and the complaints link is here.

To finish on a relevant, but lighter, note: from
Channel 4 Films, Frog Porn. This comic
short by Graeme Kennedy features a seething pondful of spawning frogs with a
soft porn backing sound track.

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Comments policy - a problem

Sorry, but I've had to bin a few comments lately.

Comments are a difficult issue. On the one hand, I think that an absence of mechanism for feedback and factual correction is one of the besetting and egregious features that distinguishes propaganda from open rational discourse (and purporting to have such a mechanism, but only publishing friendly comments, is even worse). Any number of alternative health magazines and forums are guilty of this (as indeed are mainstream newspapers). Therefore I have comments enabled.

On the other hand, I'm not letting that stance be misused to game the system: I'll reject posts containing personal insults, libel, copyright breaches and links to sites that breach copyright, comments used as vehicles for promotion or linkspam, etc.

If you have peer-reviewed evidence refuting what I've said, fine.  But I will bin comments that just say I'm wrong and link to sales/promotional sites.
- Ray

Swamp gas from a weather balloon

"All right, Beatrice, there was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus." - Men in Black.

An odd story came my way today, repeated with permission. Felix Grant tells me of unusual goings-on in Weston-super-Mare: a relative's child had phoned Felix at work to say that his younger sibling had been sent home from school, and the school closed, because a UFO had landed in the school field. "Black bugs had come out and were laying eggs and stuff; there were men in white suits everywhere." The children's mother had phoned the school, and took an hour to get through. When she eventually reached the head, he said the lines had been jammed by newspapers, TV stations, et al, calling the school for the story.

This was as far as Felix knew it. No signs in the local press. But I checked a little later and found in the Weston & Somerset Mercury this account: UFO sighting in Rowle:

A UFO was spotted high above Worle at the weekend.

Aliens were spotted running the grounds of Castle Batch Primary School in Rawlings Avenue.

Police, scientists in white protective suits and the press turned up to the site on Monday morning to see the area where a flying saucer had 'crash landed'.

The mock-up was all part of an exercise, organised by teacher Kate Gill, to get the youngsters at the school enthusiastic about writing.

Pupils were shown computer-generated images in assembly of a flying saucer above the school and a silver alien running through the grounds. The 450 youngsters then had to write about their experiences.

To a conspiracy theorist, this would be wonderful fodder: "a writing exercise" seems such a lame explanation that it sounds like a cover story. However, more likely, this has the look of accidental meme creation: an exercise in fiction that managed to escape from its intended confines.

The newspaper report is rather inexplicit about which bits were mock-up. Involving police, press and people in white suits sounds an implausibly elaborate and expensive way to float a topic for a primary school essay. Were these people part of the mock-up, or were they real-world services that turned up in response to children propagating a story that had become too effective a meme?

As I said, very odd. More later, if possible.

Strawberry meth myth

This has been widely reported, but deserves repetition: the BBC and others (see Police duped over fictional drug) have been caught out for repeating a hoax story about "strawberry meth", an alleged drug being distributed to schoolchildren. Some headteachers who received it even held special assemblies to pass it on. This has quite a strong resemblance to the old Blue Star Tattoos urban myth.
      I'm sorry to say that that the accounts of this story repeatedly excuse the propagation as being "in good faith" (see here and other sources). I have run into this no end of times on calling bullshit on paranoid garbage being forwarded to me via e-mails whose senders failed to put brain into gear, and the senders invariably go into some defensive whine about it being in good faith.
      "Good faith" is no excuse for being a total fuckwit and copying some scary story without engaging critical faculties. The policeperson and headteachers who passed this on deserve strong censure for failing to provide accurate information to those whom they are supposed to be protecting.

Cod equations again

From the BBC: How to make better decisions by Garth Sundem. This is presumably to hype yesterday's accompanying Horizon program (and Sundem's Geek Logik book - he has a couple of blogs too, here and here. If Sundem's BBC article is anything to go by, there's nothing to see , folks.

At your local pub, you have many beers to choose from. Which is best? If you are like most human beings, the answer is "the most expensive one."

Bollocks. Here's a sample beer tariff from a menu I did a while back: Carling £2.30 / 4X £2.10 / Guinness £2.60 / Stella £2.60 / Boddingtons £2.30 / Otter £2.40 / London Pride £2.40 / Abbot £2.40. By Sundem's theory, I should think Guiness or Stella to be best. No. I don't like stout, and generally think London Pride or Otter to be best because of the flavour, but I sometimes drink the least expensive, Carling, on hot summer days. It's simplifying to the point of nonsense to reduce a complex decision of taste, expense, time of year, and abv (e.g. one might like a strong beer for a single pint, or prefer a weaker and less expensive "session beer" if out for an evening) to "most expensive".

As described by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, by introducing tools to measure a situation

Nooo. This is a classic handwaving misapplication of the Uncertainty Principle, which is a precise mathematical relation between specific measurements at subatomic level. It is not a generic rule for macroscopic phenomena.

To add a layer of mathematics, if one factor on the list is more important than the others, we might multiply it by two. If it is very important, we could even square or cube it.

Again, handwaving. Even if an equation can be constructed, it is meaningless as an accurate description of the phenomenon modelled unless the dependence on different variables is actually measured and the precise power law investigated. Flinging an ad hoc multiple or power at a variable won't do that. This is even assuming that subjective variables such as R = amount of current relationship are meaningful quantities.
      Unlike most of the PR and news story creators of cod equations, Gareth Sundem has sufficient mathematical nous to make equations that are mathematically well-formed and create plausible output. But they are still oversimplifications with no real justification for the variables chosen or the coefficients/powers applied to them. For example:



is supposed to describe a man's chances of success with approaching a woman. On what basis are the variables chosen? (W=Wittiness, G= Aggression, A = attractiveness, R = "amount" of relationship). Why the different coefficients 2 and 3 on male and female attractiveness? Why square R and divide it by 20? Not to mention the appallingly sexist assumption that unattractive women will be "easy".
      In short, it's a bit of psychological candyfloss framed as mathematics. No harm in that; but the BBC shouldn't be presenting it as a serious scientific approach to decision-making.

Racehorse success in genes ... or not

Interesting how different news outlets interpret a story. The Telegraph's High price may not make champion horse reports an interesting result of a study by Alastair Wilson and Andrew Rambaut at the University of Edinburgh finding that stud fees are a poor marker for genetic quality of racehorses. The Guardian concludes And now the racing results ... 1st: Nurture, 2nd: Nature. The Times focuses on the small genetic component as crucial: 10% factor that makes a champion. Go figure.
      None of the coverage mentions a further source of confusion: that the breeders themselves are unlikely to select stock optimally, due to working by outdated folk theories of horse genetics. This Pedigree Dynamics article, Conception and Misconceptions - A light hearted look at breeding theories of the past, look at some of them, mentioning how theories such as telegony and "mental impression" survived in the thoroughbred horse breeding industry well into the 20th century.
      Even now, racehorse breeding is governed by many semi-empirical racehorse breeding theories that don't bear much relation to real-world genetics. For instance, some breeders place store in the "X factor" (possession of a Large Heart gene). Others rate the horse's heritage according to its place in the Bruce Lowe Family Numbers classification. Yet others go by Dosage (closeness of relationship to chefs-de-race, the relatively rare consistently winning stallions) or "nicking patterns" (the belief, debunked here, that particular pairs of bloodlines may be statistically identified as producing winners when mated); or even rules-of-thumb that smack of outright numerology ("a mare’s third foal, if born when the mare is seven years old, is the most likely to be a successful racehorse").
      Given such a muddle of beliefs, it's unsurprising that nurture should turn out to be the dominant factor in racehorse success.

BBC diet stories: more failure to investigate agendas

From the BBC recently: Medieval diets 'far more healthy', which links to an older item, Americans look to Jesus for diet. Spot the connection. They're both stories about diets attributed to doctors: the first, "Dr Roger Henderson ... a Shropshire GP"; the second, "Don Colbert, a Florida doctor". The problem is that this completely fails to explain to the reader where these sources are coming from.
      Dr Roger Henderson is not just any old GP, but a media newspaper columnist and PR consultant, and as the ''Telegraph'' version of this story reports and you can read in the press release, Romans and Tudors were healthier than modern Britons, the research was commissioned by Lloydspharmacy. The thrust appears to be scare readers about cholesterol in the modern diet and, handily, Andy Murdock, Pharmacy Director for Lloydspharmacy has the remedy: "...it’s vital that people take whatever steps they can to reduce their chances of suffering modern conditions such as high cholesterol. To help people identify their level of risk we’ve launched a heart and cholesterol check at Lloydspharmacy".
      Don Colbert is likewise not just any Florida doctor but a celebrity TV doctor/evangelist (see drcolbert.com) whose products include What Would Jesus Eat? The Ultimate Program for Eating Well, Feeling Great and Living Longer, the What Would Jesus Eat Cookbook and various associated supplements.
      This was findable with trivial Googling, and in any case would be in the press releases behind the stories. Why does the BBC not report this? Perhaps it's policy and they think it makes the stories non-commercial. But it doesn't; omitting the commercial back-story makes those interests effectively covert, and hides from readers that they're being sold something.