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NOW FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE…
VINTAGE MICHIGAN J. FROG (TOAD)
MISTER TO YOU...
POCKET SIZE FETISH / EFFIGY
MADE OF CHALKWARE / PLASTER PARIS
CARNIVAL / FAIR SWAG
FIGURE DEPICTS A FROG IN A TOP HAT AND TAILS TUXEDO
HE IS HOLDING A BOUQUET FOR HIS BELOVED
AND DONS A BUTTONEER
HE MEASURES ABOUT 7cm X 4.5cm X 4.5cm
c. 1960 +/-
MISTER TO YOU...
POCKET SIZE FETISH / EFFIGY
MADE OF CHALKWARE / PLASTER PARIS
CARNIVAL / FAIR SWAG
FIGURE DEPICTS A FROG IN A TOP HAT AND TAILS TUXEDO
HE IS HOLDING A BOUQUET FOR HIS BELOVED
AND DONS A BUTTONEER
HE MEASURES ABOUT 7cm X 4.5cm X 4.5cm
c. 1960 +/-
FYI
--------------------------------------------
Michigan J. Frog is an animated cartoon character from the Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies film series. Originally a one-shot character, his only appearance during the original run of the Merrie Melodies series was as the star of One Froggy Evening (December 31, 1955), written by Michael Maltese and directed by Chuck Jones. In this cartoon, partly inspired by a 1944 Cary Grant film entitled Once Upon a Time, Michigan is a male frog who wears a top hat, carries a cane, sings pop music, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley hits, and other songs from the late 19th and early 20th century while dancing and performing acrobatics in the style of early 20th century vaudeville. Michigan's talent is discovered by a hapless man who has visions of profiting from it, but catches on too late that the frog will perform for him and him alone; in front of anyone else, Michigan is just a normal frog and thwarts his dreams of wealth.
He appeared in a later cartoon titled Another Froggy Evening, which was released on October 6, 1995, and was a former mascot of The WB Television Network from that year until 2006, when after The Night of Favorites and Farewells, he was shown as the final image of a white silhouette bowing down to viewers, bringing up The CW Television Network.
History
The character may be loosely based on Ol' Rip the Horned Toad.
The frog's earliest name was "Enrico", as given in The Bugs Bunny Show (1960). The character's later, enduring name comes from the song "The Michigan Rag" (an original song written by Jones, Maltese, and musical director Milt Franklyn), which he sings in the cartoon. In a clip from a DVD special, Jones stated that he had come up with the name "Michigan Frog" during the 1970s and was inspired to add the "J." as a middle initial while being interviewed by a writer named Jay Cocks.
The Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD credits Frog's original singing vocals to Bill Roberts, a nightclub entertainer in Los Angeles in the 1950s who had also done voice work for the 1948 MGM cartoon Little 'Tinker. (Roberts went uncredited at the time, as were most voice actors at the Warner Bros. studio who were not Mel Blanc, since only Blanc had a clause in his contract ensuring he would get on-screen credit.) In Another Froggy Evening, his voice was provided by Jeff McCarthy.
Michigan J. Frog made a cameo appearance in the New Looney Tunes episode "Misjudgment Day", voiced by Jeff Bergman. He appears at the end of the episode as the one who sent one of his futuristic robots to destroy Bugs Bunny, and later he appeared in the show's intro for the second season.
A frog that resembles Michigan appeared in the beginning of the 1988 Disney/Amblin film Who Framed Roger Rabbit in Maroon Studios. The character also appears on the cover illustration (drawn by Chuck Jones) of singer-songwriter Leon Redbone's 1975 album On the Track.
------------------------------------------------
A funfair or simply fair (e.g., "county fair", "state fair") is a small to medium sized traveling show primarily composed of stalls and other amusements. Larger fairs such as the permanent fairs of cities and seaside resorts might be called a fairground, although technically this should refer to the land where a fair is traditionally held. The word fair comes from the Latin word feria, meaning a holiday.
In North America, a fair is sometimes called a carnival or exhibition, although in Europe and other parts of the world influenced by the Catholic church, a carnival is a procession usually held around Shrove Tuesday which is sometimes accompanied by a funfair, but which is known in the United States as Mardi Gras. One strand of the medieval fair has diverged to become the agricultural show which often still has a funfair attached. Increasingly, funfairs are appearing as additional attractions alongside any large gatherings of people such as major sporting events, music festivals, and civic celebrations.
Sidestalls and games
Most stalls feature games of skill or strength. The most traditional example being the coconut shy in which players throw balls at coconuts balanced on posts, winning the coconut if they manage to dislodge it.
Other sidestalls range from the trivially easy, such as hooking rubber ducks from a water trough in which nearly every player is expected to win a prize, to the deceptively challenging, which includes games which utilize optical illusions or physical relationships that are difficult to judge. In the United States, the funfair is one of the few arenas of public life in which classical hoodwinkery in the form of outright fraud can be perpetrated by the light of day. Highly profitable (and therefore timeless) games include:
the hoopla, in which a ring can be demonstrated to fit neatly around a wooden block, but when the customer attempts to throw the ring over the block, it is nearly impossible to achieve the perfect angle which the sideshow barker (attendant) deftly demonstrates. This game is similar to quoits and horseshoe pitching.
ball-in-the-basket games in which the basket is presented at an angle almost certain to bounce the ball out. (The basket bottom may also be suspiciously springy.)
basketball-shooting games in which the basket is ovoid in shape and the basketball literally cannot fit inside the rim under any circumstances, but takes advantage of the oval shape an individual expects to see when directly confronted by a circle presented at an angle nearly parallel with the ground. (The sides of such a game are walled with netting which presumably keeps the ball in play, but the netting is then typically, and ironically, coated with the many prizes the customer hopes to win, but which block any possibility of viewing the basket from the side and thus exposing the hoax.) Sometimes the basketballs are also pumped up with air to their full capacity, thus allowing the ball to bounce off of the hoop more easily.
archery, air rifles, and paint ball guns with sometimes misaligned sights, with targets ranging from bullseyes to playing cards.
Much of the true thievery has been driven out of funfairs in the twentieth century, and combined with an increasing emphasis on the role of families and small children in such entertainment, contemporary showmen often find greater profit in pricing their games far above the value of the prizes being offered, with complex formulae for upgrading to the large prizes that advertise the game and instill desire among those strolling by. The rises in pricing of many sidestalls must often reflect the overheads of running fairground equipment - the cost of swag, diesel, staff and rents.
Typical prizes change to reflect popular tastes. A traditional fairground prize used to be a goldfish in a small plastic bag, but these have fallen out of favor; partly because goldfish are no longer seen as exotic, but also because animal welfare concerns are frequently raised. Many stalls offer cuddly toys as prizes — many teenage romances are established at funfairs, where thrill rides provide ample excuse for embracing. Displays of skill at shooting and winning a cuddly toy for your girl/boyfriend is a rite of passage for many young men.In showland, the prizes are known as swag and are supplied by a swagman.
-----------------------
Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura (meaning "tailless", from the Ancient Greek an-, without + oura, tail). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" appeared in the early Triassic of Madagascar, but molecular clock dating suggests their origins may extend further back to the Permian, 265 million years ago. Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is found in tropical rainforests. There are 4,800 recorded species, making them among the most diverse vertebrate groups. The body plan of an adult frog is generally characterized by a stout body, protruding eyes, cleft tongue, limbs folded underneath and the absence of a tail. Besides living in fresh water and on dry land, the adults of some species are adapted for living underground or in trees.
The skin of the frog is glandular, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic. Warty species of frog tend to be called toads. Frog warts (or verrucae) are elevations in the skin where glandular toxins tend to concentrate. The distinction between frogs and toads is based on informal naming conventions concentrating on the warts rather than taxonomy or evolutionary history; some toads are more closely related to frogs than other toads. Frogs' skins vary in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to advertise toxicity and warn off predators.
Frogs typically lay their eggs in water. The eggs hatch into aquatic larvae, called tadpoles, that have internal gills and tails. They have highly specialized rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets. The life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage. Adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on fruit. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into biomass, which makes them an important food source for predators. Frogs are a keystone group in the food web dynamics of many of the world's ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making frogs susceptible to dehydration, so they either live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs produce a wide range of vocalizations, particularly in their breeding season, and exhibit many different kinds of complex behaviours to attract mates, to fend off predators and to generally survive.
There is a significant decline in amphibian populations affecting many regions. In 2006, one third of all frog and salamander species (33.6%) that depend on water during some stage of their life cycle were considered to be globally threatened or extinct. The number of malformations among frogs is on the rise and an emerging fungal disease, chytridiomycosis, has spread around the world. Conservation biologists are working to understand the causes of these problems and to resolve them.
Frogs are valued as food by humans and also have many cultural roles in literature, symbolism and religion.
Etymology and taxonomy
The name frog derives from Old English frogga, (compare Old Norse frauki, German Frosch, older Dutch spelling kikvorsch), cognate with Sanskrit plava (frog), probably deriving from Proto-Indo-European praw = "to jump". Approximately 88% of amphibian species are classified in the order Anura. These include around 4,810 species in 33 families, of which the Leptodactylidae (1,100 spp.), Hylidae (800 spp.) and Ranidae (750 spp.) are the richest in species. Salientia (Latin salere (salio), "to jump") is a stem group including modern frogs in the order Anura and their close fossil relatives the "proto-frogs" (e.g., Triadobatrachus and Czatkobatrachus). The common features possessed by the "proto-frogs" nested within the Salientia group include fourteen presacral vertebrae (modern frogs have eight or nine), a long and forward sloping ilium in the pelvis, the presence of a frontal parietal bone and a lower jaw without teeth. The earliest frog fossil that falls into the anuran lineage proper, Prosalirus bitis, lived in the early Jurassic.
The use of the common names "frog" and "toad" has no taxonomic justification. From a classification perspective, all members of the order Anura are frogs, but only members of the family Bufonidae are considered "true toads". The use of the term "frog" in common names usually refers to species that are aquatic or semi-aquatic and have smooth, moist skins and the term "toad" generally refers to species that are terrestrial with dry, warty skins. There are numerous exceptions to this rule. The fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina) has a slightly warty skin and prefers a watery habitat, whereas the Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki) is in the toad family Bufonidae and has a smooth skin.
Anura includes all modern frogs and any fossil species that fit within the anuran definition. The anuran larva or tadpole has a single central respiratory spiracle and mouthparts consisting of keratinous beaks and denticles.
Frogs legs are eaten by humans in many parts of the world. Originally they were supplied locally but overexploitation led to a diminution in the supply and now there is a world trade in frogs. The main importing countries are France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the United States while the chief exporting nations are Indonesia and China. The annual global trade in the American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana), mostly farmed in China, varies between 1.2 and 2.4 million tonnes.
Frogs are sometimes used for dissections in high school and university anatomy classes, often first being injected with coloured substances to enhance the contrast between the biological systems. This practice is declining with increasing concerns about animal welfare and "digital frogs" are now available for virtual dissection.
Frogs have served as experimental animals throughout the history of science. Eighteenth-century biologist Luigi Galvani discovered the link between electricity and the nervous system through studying frogs. In 1852, H. F. Stannius used a frog's heart in a procedure called a Stannius ligature to demonstrate that the ventricle and atria beat independently of each other and at different rates. The African clawed frog or platanna (Xenopus laevis) was first widely used in laboratories in pregnancy assays in the first half of the 20th century. A sample of urine from a pregnant woman injected into a female frog induces it to lay eggs, a discovery made by the English zoologist, Lancelot Hogben. This is due to the fact that a hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin, is present in substantial quantities in the urine of women during pregnancy. In 1952, Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King cloned a frog by somatic cell nuclear transfer. This was the same technique later used to create Dolly the sheep and their experiment was the first time that successful nuclear transplantation had been accomplished in higher animals.
Frogs are used in cloning research and other branches of embryology. Although alternative pregnancy assays have been developed, biologists continue to use Xenopus as a model organism in developmental biology because their embryos are large and easy to manipulate, they are readily obtainable and can easily be kept in the laboratory. Xenopus laevis is increasingly being displaced by its smaller relative, Xenopus tropicalis, which reaches its reproductive age in five months rather than the one to two years taken by X. laevis, thus facilitating faster studies across generations. The genome of X. tropicalis is being sequenced.
Because frog toxins are extraordinarily diverse, they have raised the interest of biochemists as a "natural pharmacy". The alkaloid epibatidine, a painkiller two hundred times more potent than morphine, is found in some species of poison dart frogs. Other chemicals isolated from the skins of frogs may offer resistance to HIV infection. Dart poisons are under active investigation for their potential as therapeutic drugs.
It has long been suspected that pre-Columbian Mesoamericans used the venom of the cane toad (Bufo marinus) as a hallucinogen but research shows that it is more likely that they used substances discharged by the Colorado River toad (Bufo alvarius). This contains bufotenin (5-MeO-DMT), a psychoactive compound that has been used in modern times as a recreational drug. Typically, the skin secretions are dried and then smoked. Illicit drug use by licking the skin of a toad has been reported in the media but this may be an urban myth.
Exudations from the skin of the golden poison frog (Phyllobates terribilis) are traditionally used by native Colombians to poison the darts they use for hunting. The tip of the projectile is rubbed over the back of the frog and the dart is launched from a blowgun. The combination of the two alkaloid toxins batrachotoxin and homobatrachotoxin is so powerful that it has been estimated that one frog contains enough poison to kill about 22,000 mice. Two other species, the Kokoe poison dart frog (Phyllobates aurotaenia) and the black-legged dart frog (Phyllobates bicolor) are also used for this purpose but are less toxic and need to be heated over a fire to extract the poison.
Cultural beliefs
Frogs feature prominently in folklore, fairy tales and popular culture. They tend to be portrayed as benign, ugly and clumsy but with hidden talents. Examples include Michigan J. Frog, The Frog Prince and Kermit the Frog. The Warner Brothers cartoon One Froggy Evening features Michigan J. Frog who will only dance and sing for the demolition worker who opens his time capsule but will not perform in public. "The Frog Prince" is a fairy tale about a frog which turns into a handsome prince after he has rescued a princess' golden ball and she has taken him into her palace. Kermit the Frog, on the other hand, is a conscientious and disciplined character from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street; while openly friendly and greatly talented, he is often portrayed as cringing at the fanciful behavior of more flamboyant characters.
Toads have a more sinister reputation. It was believed in European folklore that they were associated with witches as their familiar spirits and had magical powers. The toxic secretion from their skin was used in brewing evil potions but was also put to use to create magical cures for human and livestock ailments. They were associated with the devil and in John Milton's "Paradise Lost", Satan was depicted as a toad pouring poison into Eve's ear.
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped animals and often depicted frogs in their art. In Panama, local legend held that good fortune would come to anyone who spotted a Panamanian golden frog and some believed that when one of these frogs died, it would turn into a golden talisman known as a huaca. Today, despite being extinct in the wild, Panamanian golden frogs remain an important cultural symbol and can be found on decorative cloth molas made by the Kuna people. The also appear as part of the inlaid design on a new overpass in Panama City, on T-shirts and even on lottery tickets.
In North America, a fair is sometimes called a carnival or exhibition, although in Europe and other parts of the world influenced by the Catholic church, a carnival is a procession usually held around Shrove Tuesday which is sometimes accompanied by a funfair, but which is known in the United States as Mardi Gras. One strand of the medieval fair has diverged to become the agricultural show which often still has a funfair attached. Increasingly, funfairs are appearing as additional attractions alongside any large gatherings of people such as major sporting events, music festivals, and civic celebrations.
Sidestalls and games
Most stalls feature games of skill or strength. The most traditional example being the coconut shy in which players throw balls at coconuts balanced on posts, winning the coconut if they manage to dislodge it.
Other sidestalls range from the trivially easy, such as hooking rubber ducks from a water trough in which nearly every player is expected to win a prize, to the deceptively challenging, which includes games which utilize optical illusions or physical relationships that are difficult to judge. In the United States, the funfair is one of the few arenas of public life in which classical hoodwinkery in the form of outright fraud can be perpetrated by the light of day. Highly profitable (and therefore timeless) games include:
the hoopla, in which a ring can be demonstrated to fit neatly around a wooden block, but when the customer attempts to throw the ring over the block, it is nearly impossible to achieve the perfect angle which the sideshow barker (attendant) deftly demonstrates. This game is similar to quoits and horseshoe pitching.
ball-in-the-basket games in which the basket is presented at an angle almost certain to bounce the ball out. (The basket bottom may also be suspiciously springy.)
basketball-shooting games in which the basket is ovoid in shape and the basketball literally cannot fit inside the rim under any circumstances, but takes advantage of the oval shape an individual expects to see when directly confronted by a circle presented at an angle nearly parallel with the ground. (The sides of such a game are walled with netting which presumably keeps the ball in play, but the netting is then typically, and ironically, coated with the many prizes the customer hopes to win, but which block any possibility of viewing the basket from the side and thus exposing the hoax.) Sometimes the basketballs are also pumped up with air to their full capacity, thus allowing the ball to bounce off of the hoop more easily.
archery, air rifles, and paint ball guns with sometimes misaligned sights, with targets ranging from bullseyes to playing cards.
Much of the true thievery has been driven out of funfairs in the twentieth century, and combined with an increasing emphasis on the role of families and small children in such entertainment, contemporary showmen often find greater profit in pricing their games far above the value of the prizes being offered, with complex formulae for upgrading to the large prizes that advertise the game and instill desire among those strolling by. The rises in pricing of many sidestalls must often reflect the overheads of running fairground equipment - the cost of swag, diesel, staff and rents.
Typical prizes change to reflect popular tastes. A traditional fairground prize used to be a goldfish in a small plastic bag, but these have fallen out of favor; partly because goldfish are no longer seen as exotic, but also because animal welfare concerns are frequently raised. Many stalls offer cuddly toys as prizes — many teenage romances are established at funfairs, where thrill rides provide ample excuse for embracing. Displays of skill at shooting and winning a cuddly toy for your girl/boyfriend is a rite of passage for many young men.In showland, the prizes are known as swag and are supplied by a swagman.
-----------------------
Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura (meaning "tailless", from the Ancient Greek an-, without + oura, tail). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" appeared in the early Triassic of Madagascar, but molecular clock dating suggests their origins may extend further back to the Permian, 265 million years ago. Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is found in tropical rainforests. There are 4,800 recorded species, making them among the most diverse vertebrate groups. The body plan of an adult frog is generally characterized by a stout body, protruding eyes, cleft tongue, limbs folded underneath and the absence of a tail. Besides living in fresh water and on dry land, the adults of some species are adapted for living underground or in trees.
The skin of the frog is glandular, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic. Warty species of frog tend to be called toads. Frog warts (or verrucae) are elevations in the skin where glandular toxins tend to concentrate. The distinction between frogs and toads is based on informal naming conventions concentrating on the warts rather than taxonomy or evolutionary history; some toads are more closely related to frogs than other toads. Frogs' skins vary in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to advertise toxicity and warn off predators.
Frogs typically lay their eggs in water. The eggs hatch into aquatic larvae, called tadpoles, that have internal gills and tails. They have highly specialized rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets. The life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage. Adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on fruit. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into biomass, which makes them an important food source for predators. Frogs are a keystone group in the food web dynamics of many of the world's ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making frogs susceptible to dehydration, so they either live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs produce a wide range of vocalizations, particularly in their breeding season, and exhibit many different kinds of complex behaviours to attract mates, to fend off predators and to generally survive.
There is a significant decline in amphibian populations affecting many regions. In 2006, one third of all frog and salamander species (33.6%) that depend on water during some stage of their life cycle were considered to be globally threatened or extinct. The number of malformations among frogs is on the rise and an emerging fungal disease, chytridiomycosis, has spread around the world. Conservation biologists are working to understand the causes of these problems and to resolve them.
Frogs are valued as food by humans and also have many cultural roles in literature, symbolism and religion.
Etymology and taxonomy
The name frog derives from Old English frogga, (compare Old Norse frauki, German Frosch, older Dutch spelling kikvorsch), cognate with Sanskrit plava (frog), probably deriving from Proto-Indo-European praw = "to jump". Approximately 88% of amphibian species are classified in the order Anura. These include around 4,810 species in 33 families, of which the Leptodactylidae (1,100 spp.), Hylidae (800 spp.) and Ranidae (750 spp.) are the richest in species. Salientia (Latin salere (salio), "to jump") is a stem group including modern frogs in the order Anura and their close fossil relatives the "proto-frogs" (e.g., Triadobatrachus and Czatkobatrachus). The common features possessed by the "proto-frogs" nested within the Salientia group include fourteen presacral vertebrae (modern frogs have eight or nine), a long and forward sloping ilium in the pelvis, the presence of a frontal parietal bone and a lower jaw without teeth. The earliest frog fossil that falls into the anuran lineage proper, Prosalirus bitis, lived in the early Jurassic.
The use of the common names "frog" and "toad" has no taxonomic justification. From a classification perspective, all members of the order Anura are frogs, but only members of the family Bufonidae are considered "true toads". The use of the term "frog" in common names usually refers to species that are aquatic or semi-aquatic and have smooth, moist skins and the term "toad" generally refers to species that are terrestrial with dry, warty skins. There are numerous exceptions to this rule. The fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina) has a slightly warty skin and prefers a watery habitat, whereas the Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki) is in the toad family Bufonidae and has a smooth skin.
Anura includes all modern frogs and any fossil species that fit within the anuran definition. The anuran larva or tadpole has a single central respiratory spiracle and mouthparts consisting of keratinous beaks and denticles.
Frogs legs are eaten by humans in many parts of the world. Originally they were supplied locally but overexploitation led to a diminution in the supply and now there is a world trade in frogs. The main importing countries are France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the United States while the chief exporting nations are Indonesia and China. The annual global trade in the American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana), mostly farmed in China, varies between 1.2 and 2.4 million tonnes.
Frogs are sometimes used for dissections in high school and university anatomy classes, often first being injected with coloured substances to enhance the contrast between the biological systems. This practice is declining with increasing concerns about animal welfare and "digital frogs" are now available for virtual dissection.
Frogs have served as experimental animals throughout the history of science. Eighteenth-century biologist Luigi Galvani discovered the link between electricity and the nervous system through studying frogs. In 1852, H. F. Stannius used a frog's heart in a procedure called a Stannius ligature to demonstrate that the ventricle and atria beat independently of each other and at different rates. The African clawed frog or platanna (Xenopus laevis) was first widely used in laboratories in pregnancy assays in the first half of the 20th century. A sample of urine from a pregnant woman injected into a female frog induces it to lay eggs, a discovery made by the English zoologist, Lancelot Hogben. This is due to the fact that a hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin, is present in substantial quantities in the urine of women during pregnancy. In 1952, Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King cloned a frog by somatic cell nuclear transfer. This was the same technique later used to create Dolly the sheep and their experiment was the first time that successful nuclear transplantation had been accomplished in higher animals.
Frogs are used in cloning research and other branches of embryology. Although alternative pregnancy assays have been developed, biologists continue to use Xenopus as a model organism in developmental biology because their embryos are large and easy to manipulate, they are readily obtainable and can easily be kept in the laboratory. Xenopus laevis is increasingly being displaced by its smaller relative, Xenopus tropicalis, which reaches its reproductive age in five months rather than the one to two years taken by X. laevis, thus facilitating faster studies across generations. The genome of X. tropicalis is being sequenced.
Because frog toxins are extraordinarily diverse, they have raised the interest of biochemists as a "natural pharmacy". The alkaloid epibatidine, a painkiller two hundred times more potent than morphine, is found in some species of poison dart frogs. Other chemicals isolated from the skins of frogs may offer resistance to HIV infection. Dart poisons are under active investigation for their potential as therapeutic drugs.
It has long been suspected that pre-Columbian Mesoamericans used the venom of the cane toad (Bufo marinus) as a hallucinogen but research shows that it is more likely that they used substances discharged by the Colorado River toad (Bufo alvarius). This contains bufotenin (5-MeO-DMT), a psychoactive compound that has been used in modern times as a recreational drug. Typically, the skin secretions are dried and then smoked. Illicit drug use by licking the skin of a toad has been reported in the media but this may be an urban myth.
Exudations from the skin of the golden poison frog (Phyllobates terribilis) are traditionally used by native Colombians to poison the darts they use for hunting. The tip of the projectile is rubbed over the back of the frog and the dart is launched from a blowgun. The combination of the two alkaloid toxins batrachotoxin and homobatrachotoxin is so powerful that it has been estimated that one frog contains enough poison to kill about 22,000 mice. Two other species, the Kokoe poison dart frog (Phyllobates aurotaenia) and the black-legged dart frog (Phyllobates bicolor) are also used for this purpose but are less toxic and need to be heated over a fire to extract the poison.
Cultural beliefs
Frogs feature prominently in folklore, fairy tales and popular culture. They tend to be portrayed as benign, ugly and clumsy but with hidden talents. Examples include Michigan J. Frog, The Frog Prince and Kermit the Frog. The Warner Brothers cartoon One Froggy Evening features Michigan J. Frog who will only dance and sing for the demolition worker who opens his time capsule but will not perform in public. "The Frog Prince" is a fairy tale about a frog which turns into a handsome prince after he has rescued a princess' golden ball and she has taken him into her palace. Kermit the Frog, on the other hand, is a conscientious and disciplined character from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street; while openly friendly and greatly talented, he is often portrayed as cringing at the fanciful behavior of more flamboyant characters.
Toads have a more sinister reputation. It was believed in European folklore that they were associated with witches as their familiar spirits and had magical powers. The toxic secretion from their skin was used in brewing evil potions but was also put to use to create magical cures for human and livestock ailments. They were associated with the devil and in John Milton's "Paradise Lost", Satan was depicted as a toad pouring poison into Eve's ear.
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped animals and often depicted frogs in their art. In Panama, local legend held that good fortune would come to anyone who spotted a Panamanian golden frog and some believed that when one of these frogs died, it would turn into a golden talisman known as a huaca. Today, despite being extinct in the wild, Panamanian golden frogs remain an important cultural symbol and can be found on decorative cloth molas made by the Kuna people. The also appear as part of the inlaid design on a new overpass in Panama City, on T-shirts and even on lottery tickets.
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