--- title: Study Shows How Even Frogs Make Irrational Mating Choices description: Frogs, like other animals, don't necessarily make rational choices when choosing partners, new research shows. canonical: https://time.com/4015104/frog-mating-choices/ author: Justin Worland article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-28T22:00:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:00.057Z article:section: Science og:title: Study Shows How Even Frogs Make Irrational Mating Choices og:description: "In some in cases irrational decisions can be looked at as the better way to have gone," a researcher said og:url: https://time.com/4015104/frog-mating-choices/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt20b8814a290e5450/698861888e060143bf4621ec/frogs-mating.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5200 og:image:height: 2925 og:image:alt: frogs mating og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Study Shows How Even Frogs Make Irrational Mating Choices twitter:description: "In some in cases irrational decisions can be looked at as the better way to have gone," a researcher said twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt20b8814a290e5450/698861888e060143bf4621ec/frogs-mating.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Study Shows How Even Frogs Make Irrational Mating Choices > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is TIME's weekly climate and energy newsletter, written by senior correspondent Justin Worland. It connects the energy transition to the decisions reshaping business, technology, policy and markets. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=c78ded09-f0c2-4108-bd31-6db7efa4d951&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Frog Legs Made the Oscar Statue [Watch (HLS stream): How Frog Legs Made the Oscar Statue](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/mujLDS0e.m3u8) (2:08)  _Published 2015-02-19. This is the science behind the Oscar statues_  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Aug 28, 2015 10:00 PM UTC  Tungara Frog (Physalaemus pustulosus) pair in amplexus in the water, Panama Tungara Frog (Physalaemus pustulosus) pair in amplexus in the water, Panama Getty Images  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Aug 28, 2015 10:00 PM UTC 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 all bets are off if you throw in a third, less attractive frog, new research shows. Researchers evaluated mating calls from male túngara frog for the new [study](http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aab2012), published this week in the journal _Science._ The finding adds to a growing body of research suggesting that mating choices don’t follow rational expectations. Male frogs produce a sound to advertise themselves to potential mates. Female frogs typically responded best to longer calls made at a lower frequency when choosing between two male options. But when researchers added a third option to the mix that performed worse on both metrics, the female frog would often choose the intermediate option. Study author Amanda Lea, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, likened the scenario, known as the “decoy effect,” 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 costumer 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. **Read more** [Bees Are Losing Their Habitat Because of Climate Change](http://time.com/3951339/bees-climate-change/?iid=time%5Fspeed) “Whatever you choose as the most important trait to begin with should also be the most important trait if you introduce a third option,” Lea said. “For some reason, adding a third option leads you to evaluate the first two and reverse your preferences.” But the unexpected result doesn’t necessarily mean that the frogs made the wrong choice. Additional analysis might reveal why picking the third option may in fact be better for a frog, according to Lea. “In some in cases irrational decisions can be looked at as the better way to have gone,” Lea said. “Going with your intuition is often better. It just depends on how you weigh your costs and benefits.” ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] When you think about an Oscar as this beautiful gold structure. But it's not 100 % gold. Actually inside of it is this metal-- pewter. So how did we go from this to the gold statue? Well in order to understand that, we actually have to think about frog's legs. Back in the 1700s, there was a professor Luigi Galvani. He was a professor of anatomy. He was doing experiments on frogs. And when he was dissecting a frog with a copper clamp and with a metal scalpel, he noticed something. he noticed that the legs twitched like it was alive. He did this again. Twitched again. This was fantastic, so he wrote up his results, sent it to all the scientists in the land ,. Everybody embraced this idea of what he called, animal electricity. Now there was another professor his name was Alessandro Volta and he lived on the other side of Italy. And he was a physicist, and initially he thought that this was a, a good idea. But over time he started thinking that it wasn't the frog at all, it wasn't animal electricity it was actually the two metals. So what he did is he made a stack of two different metals, made it, a bunch of these sandwiches, put them into a jar with saltwater, connected it to a wire, and then touched a frog. The frog jumped. So what Volta created was a battery. Now you may be asking, what's this got to do with the Oscars? Well, we don't, we can't have an Oscar that's a hundred percent gold. Too expensive, but we want to form a thin layer of gold on top of the very cheap metal, so how do we do that? Well, it ends up that in a battery, we have two different metals, A and B. And electricity moves from A to B. Now, what you might not know, is that a metal, the materials, move from B to A. That is, that some of the metal of B starts to coat the A. Well that's what happens with the Oscars. The Oscars are put in this huge tank and in the liquid is microscopic gold. Electricity's connected to the Oscar and then the gold is attracted to the Oscar. That's how we get this wonderful gold statue that we know today. 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