this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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Because it's not in rainwater, it's in runoff from cities and dairy farms. The chemicals in question are basically synthetic estrogens and their metabolites and frogs are just more sensitive to those in the environment than mammals.
Really?
Can you provide sources?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4586825/
Frogs and other amphibians are actually incredibly sensitive to all manner of chemicals. Heavy metals, trace pharmaceutical contamination in human wastewater... They basically breathe water through their very thin skin and have delicate tissues overall. They provide unique issues for conservationists because they are usually the first water related species to collapse.
Humans have a history of being able to tolerate years and years of direct contact with arsenic, lead and various toxins. Your basic oil paint set from before 1950's has a lifetimes worth of a modern person's regular exposure. Frogs are a poor indicator of how humans react to anything.
Plant based estrogens don't impact humans much. They do sheep... But only because they have four stomachs and can actually sort of process them. In humans they just slip through the system mostly untouched.
So sensitive in fact that a really common type of pregnancy test basically involved exposing a particular type of frog to human female urine. The frog being so sensitive to the presence of certain hormones would begin to ovulate if the urine sample was from a pregnant woman.
Really interesting but a bit of a shit lot in life for the frog!
To be fair that's an improvement over the previous test since you could reuse the frogs while you had to kill the rabbit. Even older ones involved peeing on grain. We've known that there was something different about the urine of women when they are pregnant for a shockingly long time, but couldn't explain exactly what in any real detail until fairly recently.
I didn't know about the grain or rabbit tests. At least the rabbits got off the hook when the frogs presented themselves as a better option, I suppose.