Boiling frog - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The boiling frog story is a widespread anecdote

Anecdote

An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...

describing a frog

Frog

Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...

slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

for the inability of people to react to significant changes that occur gradually. According to contemporary biologists the premise of the story is not literally true; a frog submerged and gradually heated will jump out. However, some 19th century research experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true, provided the heating is gradual enough.

Cultural usage

The boiling frog story is generally told in a metaphor

Metaphor

ical context, with the upshot being that people should make themselves aware of gradual change lest they suffer eventual undesirable consequences. This may be in support of a slippery slope

Slippery slope

In debate or rhetoric, a slippery slope is a classic form of argument, arguably an informal fallacy...

argument. It is also used in business to illustrate the idea that change needs to be gradual to be accepted. The expression "boiling frog syndrome" is sometimes used as shorthand for the metaphor.

The story has been retold many times and used to illustrate many different points. It has been used to warn about diverse phenomena, for example: in 1960 about sympathy towards the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

during the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

; in 1980 about the impending collapse of civilization anticipated by survivalists

Survivalism

Survivalism is a movement of individuals or groups who are actively preparing for future possible disruptions in local, regional, national, or international social or political order...

; in the 1990s about inaction in response to climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

and staying in abusive relationships

Domestic violence

Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...

. It has also been used by libertarians

Libertarianism

Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

to warn about slow erosion of civil rights

Civil rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

.

In the 1996 novel The Story of B
The Story of B
The Story of B is a 1996 novel written by Daniel Quinn and published by Bantam Publishing. It chronicles a young priest's movement away from his religion and toward the teachings of a mysterious preacher named B, expanding upon many of the philosophical ideas introduced in Quinn's 1992 novel Ishmael...

, environmentalist author Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn is an American writer described as an environmentalist. He is best known for his book Ishmael , which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991....

spends a chapter on the metaphor of the boiling frog, using it to describe human history, population growth and food surplus. Pierce Brosnan

Pierce Brosnan

Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE is an Irish actor, film producer and environmentalist. After leaving school at 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration, but trained at the Drama Centre in London for three years...

's character Harry Dalton mentioned it in the 1997 disaster movie Dante's Peak
Dante's Peak
Dante's Peak is a 1997 disaster film directed by Roger Donaldson, written by Leslie Bohem, and starring Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton and Charles Hallahan. The film portrays the effect of a volcano erupting near a small town in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The film is loosely...

in reference to the accumulating warning signs of the volcano's reawakening. Al Gore

Al Gore

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

used a version of the story in his presentations and the 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate, he has given more than a thousand times.Premiering at the...

to describe ignorance about global warming

Global warming

Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

. In his version the frog is rescued before it is harmed.

In philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

the boiling frog story has been used as a way of explaining the sorites paradox

Sorites paradox

The sorites paradox is a paradox that arises from vague predicates. The paradox of the heap is an example of this paradox which arises when one considers a heap of sand, from which grains are individually removed...

. This paradox describes a hypothetical heap of sand from which individual grains are removed one at a time, and asks if there is a specific point when it can no longer be defined as a heap.

Scientific background

Several experiments involving recording the reaction of frogs to slowly heated water took place in the 19th century. In 1869, while doing experiments searching for the location of the soul, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz

Friedrich Goltz

Friedrich Leopold Goltz was a German physiologist and nephew of the writer Bogumil Goltz.Goltz held various university positions in Königsberg, Halle and Strasbourg, Germany...

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 experiments showed that frogs did not attempt to escape gradually heated water. An 1872 experiment by Heinzmann demonstrated that a normal frog would not attempt to escape if the water was heated slowly enough, and this was corroborated in 1875 by Fratscher.

Goltz raised the temperature of the water from 17.5° C to 56° C in about ten minutes, or 3.8° C per minute, in his experiment which prompted normal frogs to attempt to escape, whereas Heinzmann heated the frogs over the course of 90 minutes from about 21 °C to 37.5 °C, a rate of less than 0.2 °C per minute. One source from 1897 says, "in one experiment the temperature was raised at a rate of 0.002°C per second, and the frog was found dead at the end of 2½ hours without having moved."

In 1888 William Thompson Sedgwick

William Thompson Sedgwick

William Thompson Sedgwick was a key figure in shaping public health in the United States.William T...

explained the apparent contradiction between the results of these experiments as a consequence of different heating rates used in the experiments: "The truth appears to be that if the heating be sufficiently gradual, no reflex movements will be produced even in the normal frog ; if it be more rapid, yet take place at such a rate as to be fairly called "gradual," it will not secure the repose of the normal frog under any circumstances..."

Modern sources tend to dispute that the phenomenon is real. In 1995, Professor Douglas Melton, of the Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

Biology department, said, "If you put a frog in boiling water, it won't jump out. It will die. If you put it in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot — they don't sit still for you." Dr. George R. Zug, curator of reptiles and amphibians at the National Museum of Natural History

National Museum of Natural History

The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. Admission is free and the museum is open 364 days a year....

, also rejected the suggestion, saying that "If a frog had a means of getting out, it certainly would get out."

In 2002 Dr. Victor H. Hutchison, Professor Emeritus of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma is a coeducational public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. the university had 29,931 students enrolled, most located at its...

, with a research interest in thermal relations of amphibians, said that "The legend is entirely incorrect!". He described how the critical thermal maximum

Critical thermal maximum

Critical thermal maximum, in zoology, is that temperature for a given species above which most individuals respond with unorganized locomotion, subjecting the animal to likely death...

for many frog species has been determined by contemporary research experiments: as the water is heated by about 2 °F, or 1.1 °C, per minute, the frog becomes increasingly active as it tries to escape, and eventually jumps out if the container allows it.

Commentary

Law professor and legal commentator Eugene Volokh

Eugene Volokh

Eugene Volokh is an American legal commentator and the Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law...

commented in 2003 that regardless of the behavior of real frogs, the boiling frog story is useful as a metaphor

Metaphor

, comparing it to the metaphor of an ostrich

Ostrich

The Ostrich is one or two species of large flightless birds native to Africa, the only living member of the genus Struthio. Some analyses indicate that the Somali Ostrich may be better considered a full species apart from the Common Ostrich, but most taxonomists consider it to be a...

with its head in the sand

Ostrich effect

In behavioral finance, the ostrich effect is the avoidance of apparently risky financial situations by pretending they do not exist. The name comes from the common legend that ostriches bury their heads in the sand to avoid danger....

. Economist and New York Times op-ed

Op-ed

An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...

writer Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman

Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...

used the story as a metaphor in a July 2009 column, while pointing out that real frogs behave differently. Journalist James Fallows

James Fallows

James Fallows is an American print and radio journalist. He has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly for many years. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a...

has been advocating since 2006 for people to stop retelling the story, describing it as a "stupid canard" and a "myth". But following Krugman's column, he declared "peace on the boiled frog front" and said that using the story is fine as long as you point out it's not literally true.

Cultural usage

Scientific background

Commentary

See also