Your average frog loves a good meaty fly. But to this amphibian predator, a stationary fly might not register as something worth nabbing, if it is seen at all. “[A frog] will starve to death surrounded by food if it is not moving,” wrote the authors of a 1959 paper in Proceedings of the IRE [Institute of Radio Engineers]. Only when the fly takes off does the frog’s eye-brain messaging system kick on and suggest tongue action. The movement itself (actually, the resulting change in the intensity of light) transforms fly into food. Or really, nothing into something.
Wild how that works. I highly recommend you read through the paper linked above for a detailed explanation of the frog’s eye-brain connection. It’s delightful reading (minus the part about what the frog went through).
Now. I’m looking for an analogy here; I’m sure there must be one. Is it this? That we, like the frog, can be blind to things that aren’t making a fuss, that aren’t yelling at the top of their lungs like the Whos down in Whoville, “We are here! We are here!” Even things that are crucial to our own survival? I mean, if the frog registered the un-moving fly, the frog would feed freely. But no movement, no nothing.
Or there’s this: Are we the fly, hiding in plain sight, knowing that being noticed is risky? That it’s best to stay quiet and still no matter how important the message is we’d like to project? And that, at just the right moment, rather than fight the best move is to flee?
I’m thinking this is not an either-or situation.
We can be the frog when our brains refuse to acknowledge what’s happening around us (or perhaps more at a distance in our case—war, poverty, disasters far afield, cruelty to dogs—TO DOGS!!). We can’t take it, our brains are overloaded, so we see nothing at all unless it comes into fashion to care about that thing (the fly flies), and suddenly we all want to focus on that thing, to take it down and make it stop. At least until we’re sated again.
And we’re the fly when we refuse to speak up for fear of being smacked down by the sticky tongues of our own kind. Shhhhhh. Sit tight, someone else will deal with the problem.
I mean, I get it that sometimes there is no fight in us, that fleeing is the only recourse. That’s why it’s called fight OR flight, people. (It’s hard to look cool fighting while fleeing. Think about it.) Big frog with sticky tongue, small fly with no weapon. Know when you’re beat.
WTF, evolution, the fly might ask? Why hasn’t the fly evolved a toxin or nasty taste to thwart take down? What are the fly’s chances without any option but to dash into the sky? Immobility is a defense, but that can’t be enough.
Clearly the fly registers the un-moving flog, with some deep understanding that there is a piece of soft sticky flesh marinating in that thing’s foul mouth that is apt to do serious damage. Poor fly.
Then there’s this: Does the fly that flees the frog (phew!) feel free in flight just before feeling the phlegm of the frog? And what if the frog (the fly’s foe) fumbles the fly and the fly flies far, free? Face facts: Flies are everywhere. Frogs are fumbling every day.
With apologies to everyone: Flee Fly! Frogs Fumble.
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Frog face by Felix Rottmann from Unsplash
