Get ready for some news that is shocking: each year billions of people have frogs in their throats.
Up to one billion frogs are taken from the wild for human consumption each year, according to a new study.
Researchers arrived at this conclusion by analysing UN trade data, although they acknowledge there is a lot of uncertainty in the figure.
France and the US are the two biggest importers, with significant consumption in several East Asian nations.
About one-third of all amphibians are listed as threatened species, with habitat loss the biggest factor.
This means every year a lot of frogs will croak.
But hunting is acknowledged as another important driver for some species, along with climate change, pollution and disease – notably the fungal condition chytridiomycosis which has brought rapid extinctions to some amphibians.
The new research, to be published in a forthcoming edition of the journal Conservation Biology, suggests that the global trade in wild frogs has been underestimated in the past.
But a story about people eating frogs is a story with legs.
Literally:
“Frogs legs are on the menu at school cafeterias in Europe, market stalls and dinner tables across Asia to high end restaurants throughout the world,” said Corey Bradshaw from Adelaide University in Australia.
“Amphibians are already the most threatened animal group yet assessed because of disease, habitat loss and climate change – man’s massive appetite for their legs is not helping.”
Frogs are also farmed in some countries, the BBC says. (It must be interesting to watch someone milk a frog…)
Frog legs can be big media business, too. The Food Network’s Graham Kerr gave this recipe for frog’s legs on his classic cooking show “The Galloping Gourmet.”
But there has been some serious pushback: some people have been hopping mad over the eating of frog’s legs.
Animal rights advocates protested the serving of frog legs at a London restaurant as a pizza topping.
In Florida, in May, state officials warned “against eating too many frog legs if they come from frogs caught in the state-controlled parts of the Everglades in western Miami-Dade and Broward counties,” McClatchy’s Washington Bureau reported. Nine years ago animal right advocates called on the French to boycott the eating of frog’s legs, a popular delicacy there.
So, as you can see, this is indeed an ongoing. We toad you so.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.