Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label cliche-busters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cliche-busters. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

On Boiling Frogs

Learn something new every day.
As Wikipedia puts it, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz “demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but his intact frogs attempted to escape the water.” Other 19th Century studies appeared to have different results, but modern experiments (!) show that frogs with brains are in fact smart enough to leap out of water as it is heated up.
I'd heard the Slowly-Boiled Frog thing was bunk, but I'd never looked it up.  So there it is.