Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.
Give a female frog two potential mating options, an attractive frog and an unattractive frog, and she’ll pick the attractive frog nearly every time, but if you throw in a third, less attractive frog, all bets are off.
In a study published Thursday in Science, researchers showed that the Central American túngara frogs can be tricked into picking "ugly" mates -- even when their prince charming is just within hopping distance.
The scenario, known as the “decoy effect,” is similar to the way in which a consumer might behave when purchasing a new car. A customer may opt to buy a cheap car with poor fuel efficiency instead of a more expensive car with good fuel efficiency. But the custumer might reconsider when a salesmen presents a third option that is the most expensive and also has good fuel efficiency. The customer won’t choose the third option, but he might instead choose the second most expensive.
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