questioncurl

Though probably African frogs do not say that (the chorus from Aristophanes' The Frogs).

Anyway, this was of considerable interest to me having had to do with archives relating to these here amphibians (in which they were described as 'toads'):

Escapee pregnancy test frogs colonised Wales for 50 years

and also read the ms of a work by A Friend on the history of pregnancy testing in which they played a significant role.

They replaced the rabbit test ('did the rabbit die' - the rabbit had to die, actually, in order to examine its ovaries) as this was a non-lethal test and kept producing yet more frogs.

And there was quite an issue of what to do with the little blighters once chemical testing became the norm - as I recall attempts to dispose of them as pets.

Also

The frog is genetically surprisingly similar to humans, which means that scientists can model human disease in this amphibian and replace the use of higher sentient species.

I was intending posting a link to a really depressing article in Guardian Saturday about an awful trolling site and the people who seem to have nothing to do but troll on it: but it's not currently online, you are spared.

I was thinking about such people, who seemed to be spending hours of their lives being horrible about other people and trying to dig up dirt on them, did they not have lives? could they not be doing something else?

Like, you know, bringing ghost ponds back to life: An expert team are resurrecting ice age ponds and finding rare species returning from a ‘perfect time capsule’:

The two ponds returning on farmland are the 25th and 26th ice age ponds to be restored by Sayer’s team of academics, volunteers and an enthusiastic digger driver in the Brecks, a hotspot for ancient ponds and “pingos” formed by ice-melt 10,000 years ago. Over the past two centuries, thousands of such ponds have been filled in as land was drained and “improved” for crops. So far, most of the 26 ponds have been revived on land bought by Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which has supported the restoration effort with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Brecks Fen Edge and Rivers landscape partnership scheme.
But the latest two ponds have been dug out thanks to a Norfolk farmer, who is one of an increasing number of private landowners reviving ghost and “zombie” ponds. New surveys by Sayer’s team have revealed that 22 of the ghost ponds restored since 2022 now support 136 species of wetland plant. This represents 70% of the wetland flora found in more than 400 ponds on Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Thompson Common, an internationally important nature reserve whose ponds have survived since the ice age.

The Hunt: Friction to feel. which is about the culture of searching for music before it was (theoretically) All Online:

The hunt is built upon friction. Friction is good. Friction is healthy. Friction develops adaptation. The hunt is also born of curiosity. The desire to seek and discover something you don’t know, and might never know. In the pursuit of knowledge and experience, you teach yourself about empathy, other perspectives, and mold a person who is resilient and grateful. We lost something along the way in pursuit of efficiency and this idea of saving time for productivity.

And, of course, as I am occasionally moved to point out on The Soshul Meedjas, most archives are not digitised and online (and mutter mutter a significant % of the ones that are were digitised by proprietary bodies and paywalled), and finding them can still involve Expotitions.