The Depressing Post About Frogs

So here's the post I wrote last week.

I was thinking about a talk I went to on amphibian vocalizations and ambient noise. The speaker played a few tapes of frogs singing at a pond - a rich tapestry of creaking, warbles, trills, and other noises, against the background of insects, reeds in the wind, blackbirds, etc. It sounded very nice.

Then he played another tape where you could hear a plane fly overhead, and the frogs hushed down right away, almost like the sound was physically squashing them down. After the plane passed, they started up again cautiously. The scientist measured volume and frequency of vocalizations at several different locations and plotted them against air traffic, and found that frog songs were consistently depressed each time a plane went overhead. Sometimes this happened every 3-4 minutes, all day long.

I was struck by the idea that people in the plane were completely unaware of the impact they were having on these little frogs so far below them, but they were hurting them all the same. With a plane flying over every few minutes, the frogs' singing time is significantly shortened, and their stress hormones are elevated, causing their reproduction to be less successful. Just another nail in the coffin for amphibian populations, which are already crashing from pollution and habitat destruction worldwide. And just another metaphor for the impact human activities have on natural environments everywhere. It's like the whole of nature is flattening down in fear every few minutes. This is the kind of thing that makes me very sad.