Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Boiling Frog Update

Following on from yesterday's post for those who care, snopes.com cites Research Professor Emeritus Victor Hutchison of the University of Oklahoma's Zoology Department as conducting experiments that prove that frogs will try to get out of water that is being slowly raised to boiling temperatures.

You can read about it here and if you want to know about this professor who tested frogs in boiling water you can go here. A word of warning, the official U of O site describes the professor as having four current areas of research interest.

The first is, as you might have guessed, "The physiological ecology of thermal relations of amphibians and reptiles to include determinations of the factors which influence lethal temperatures". In other words, he's really into finding out if you can get a frog to sit still while it is being boiled.

The last one is also curious: "The role of melatonin in ageing". I cannot get rid of the image of him getting a bunch of senior citizens to sit in a room, observing whether they move as the lights gradually grow dimmer.

Anyhow, score one for Google and retirement. Research mission accomplished.

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