![]() ![]() Tree frogs take full advantage of this mechanism, jumping from branch to branch - bullfrogs, not so much. The frogs were pushing the limits of what skeletal muscle should physically allow - and the scientists think that this could possibly be due to tendons in frog legs that can store a lot of potential energy like a bow and arrow and release it all at once, supercharging the frog leaps. These little tips and tricks gained by experience and collected over time seem to make all the difference, the authors said. In other words, they scared the living daylights out of the antsy amphibian by pretending to try and eat it. The jockeys had specific techniques designed to fully trigger the bullfrogs’ fight-or-flight mechanism: They dropped the frog onto the jump pad from a short height and then lunged after the frog head-first. Understanding frog physiology was key: The jockeys would keep the frogs in a cool, dark place before contests, so that they wouldn’t overheat, and then rub their legs to warm them up right before they launch.īut perhaps the most important reason was motivational. Sample size was one of them - the scientists were able to watch hundreds of frogs on thousands of jumps, compared to the paltry handful they’d do with a few frogs in a lab. Why such a vast improvement? The researchers think there are a number of factors at play. The longest jump was a whopping 2.2 meters - 70% longer than the lab record. And it wasn’t an anomaly - a full 58% of the recorded jumps surpassed the maximum jump distance in the literature, of 1.295 meters. “Every time there was a gap in the performance, we’d just grab the grid, run out there put it down, record a few frames of video, and then take it away so it didn’t disturb anyone.”Īfter wading through about 15 tapes full of several gigabytes of footage, the true winners became clear: These country frogs blew all those lab frogs’ jumping records out of the water. “So we quickly made a run to Home Depot, basically bought out all their PVC pipe and PVC joints and slapped together this enormous rectangular grid,” Astley said. They laid down a paper grid in the camera’s field of view so that they’d be able to calibrate the jump measurements later, but the wind kept blowing it away. So the scientists had to rely on a high-speed camera that could take shots of the whole field. Though the scientists had brought a force plate - a tool that takes crucial measurements including jump distances and jump angles - contest organizers didn’t want any equipment near the frogs as they competed. But they soon found themselves having to drop their high-tech instruments and improvise in the face of unforeseen challenges. ![]() ![]() The scientists lugged a whole load of lab equipment - “pretty much everything we could feasibly transport from the lab,” Astley said. ![]() “‘Professional’ frog jockeys bring their own locally-caught frogs and are serious competitors,” the authors wrote, “often working in family groups that have passed down frog jumping secrets through generations of competition.” The frog-jumping contest attracts two types of competitors: layfolk who rent a frog for a few dollars and try their luck and experienced frog jockeys in highly organized teams who have competed for years or decades. “It definitely looked like they were really performing exceptionally, and at that point we decided to go to the next fair,” said lead author Henry Astley, a biomechanist at Georgia Tech University. ![]()
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