The boiling frog is an apologue describing a

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...

being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...

for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly. While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual, according to modern biologists the premise is false: changing location is a natural

thermoregulation Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature ...

strategy for frogs and other

ectotherm An ectotherm (from the Greek () "outside" and () "heat") is an organism in which internal physiological sources of heat are of relatively small or of quite negligible importance in controlling body temperature.Davenport, John. Animal Life a ...

s, and is necessary for survival in the wild. A frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Furthermore, a frog placed into already boiling water will die immediately, not jump out.

As metaphor

The boiling frog story is generally offered as a

cautioning people to be aware of even gradual change lest they suffer eventual undesirable consequences. It may be invoked in support of a

slippery slope A slippery slope argument (SSA), in logic, critical thinking, political rhetoric, and caselaw, is an argument in which a party asserts that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant (usuall ...

argument as a caution against

creeping normality Creeping normality (also called gradualism, or landscape amnesia) is a process by which a major change can be accepted as normal and acceptable if it happens slowly through small, often unnoticeable, increments of change. The change could otherwis ...

. It is also used in business to reinforce that change needs to be gradual to be accepted. The term "boiling frog syndrome" is a metaphor used to describe the failure to act against a problematic situation which will increase in severity until reaching catastrophic proportions. It thereby encapsulates the barely noticeable impact of slow

environmental degradation Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment (biophysical), environment through depletion of resources such as quality of air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems; habitat destruction; the extinction of wildlife; an ...

that has been described by

Daniel Pauly Daniel Pauly is a French-born marine biologist, well known for his work in studying human impacts on global fisheries and in 2020 was the most cited fisheries scientist in the world. He is a professor and the project leader of the Sea Around Us ...

shifting baselines A shifting baseline (also known as a sliding baseline) is a type of change to how a system is measured, usually against previous reference points (baselines), which themselves may represent significant changes from an even earlier state of the syst ...

. The story has been retold many times and used to illustrate widely varying viewpoints: in 1960 about warning against those who are sympathetic towards the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

during the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

; in 1980 about the impending collapse of civilization anticipated by survivalists; in the 1990s about inaction in response to

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

and staying in abusive relationships. It has also been used by

libertarians Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's enc ...

to warn about the slow erosion of

civil liberties Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may ...

. In the 1996 novel ''

The Story of B ''The Story of B'' is a 1996 philosophical novel written by Daniel Quinn and published by Bantam Publishing. It chronicles a young priest's movement away from his religion and toward the environmentalist teachings of an international lecturer k ...

'', environmentalist author

Daniel Quinn Daniel Clarence Quinn (October 11, 1935 – February 17, 2018) was an American author (primarily, novelist and fabulist), cultural critic, and publisher of educational texts, best known for his novel ''Ishmael'', which won the Turner Tomorrow ...

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

Pierce Brosnan Pierce Brendan Brosnan (; born 16 May 1953) is an Irish actor and film producer. He is best known as the fifth actor to play secret agent James Bond in the Bond film series, starring in four films from 1995 to 2002 (''GoldenEye'', ''Tomorrow ...

's character Harry Dalton mentioned it in the 1997 disaster movie ''

Dante's Peak ''Dante's Peak'' is a 1997 American disaster thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson, written by Leslie Bohem, and starring Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, and Charles Hallahan. The film is set in the fictional town of Dante's Peak where the i ...

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

Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...

used a version of the story in a ''New York Times'' op-ed, in his presentations and the 2006 movie ''

An Inconvenient Truth ''An Inconvenient Truth'' is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate people about global warming. The film features a slide show that, by Gore's own e ...

'' to describe ignorance about

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

. In the movie version the frog is rescued before it is harmed. This use of the story was referenced by writer/director

Jon Cooksey Jon is a shortened form of the common given name Jonathan, derived from " YHWH has given", and an alternate spelling of John, derived from "YHWH has pardoned".How to Boil a Frog''. Law professor and legal commentator

Eugene Volokh Eugene Volokh (; born February 29, 1968 as Yevhen Volodymyrovych Volokh ( uk, Євге́н Володимирович Волох)) is an American legal scholar known for his scholarship in American constitutional law and libertarianism as well as ...

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

, comparing it to the metaphor of an ostrich with its head in the sand. Economics Nobel laureate and ''New York Times''

op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page", is a written prose piece, typically published by a North-American newspaper or magazine, which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board. O ...

writer

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was th ...

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

James Fallows James Mackenzie Fallows (born August 2, 1949) is an American writer and journalist. He is a former national correspondent for ''The Atlantic.'' His work has also appeared in ''Slate'', ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''The New York Review of Book ...

has been advocating since 2006 for people to stop retelling the story, describing it as a "stupid canard" and a "myth". After Krugman's column appeared, however, he declared "peace on the boiled frog front" and said that using the story is acceptable if the writer points out that it is not literally true.

In philosophy

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

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

sorites paradox The sorites paradox (; sometimes known as the paradox of the heap) is a paradox that results from vague predicates. A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a sing ...

. It 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.

Experiments and analysis

During the 19th century, several experiments were performed to observe the reaction of frogs to slowly heated water. In 1869, while doing experiments searching for the location of the soul, German physiologist

Friedrich Goltz Friedrich Leopold Goltz (14 August 1834 – 5 May 1902) was a German physiologist and nephew of the writer Bogumil Goltz. Born in Posen (Poznań), Grand Duchy of Posen, he studied medicine at the University of Königsberg, and following two year ...

demonstrated that a frog that has had its

brain A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a v ...

removed will remain in slowly heated water, but an intact frog attempted to escape the water when it reached 25 °C. Other 19th-century experiments were purported to show that frogs did not attempt to escape gradually heated water. An 1872 experiment by Heinzmann was said to show that a normal frog would not attempt to escape if the water was heated slowly enough, which was corroborated in 1875 by Fratscher. In 1888,

William Thompson Sedgwick William Thompson Sedgwick (December 29, 1855 – January 25, 1921) was a teacher, epidemiologist, bacteriologist, and a key figure in shaping public health in the United States. He was president of many scientific and professional organizations du ...

said that the apparent contradiction between the results of these experiments was 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 response of the normal frog under any circumstances". Goltz had 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, 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. Edward Wheeler Scripture recounted this conclusion in ''The New Psychology'' (1897): "a live frog can actually be boiled without a movement if the water is heated slowly enough; 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." Modern scientific sources report that the alleged phenomenon is not real. In 1995,

Douglas Melton Douglas A. Melton is an American medical researcher who is the Harvard University Professor, Xander University Professor at Harvard University, and was an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute until 2022. Melton serves as the co-dir ...

, a biologist at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, 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." George R. Zug, curator of reptiles and amphibians at the

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. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

, also rejected the suggestion, saying that "If a frog had a means of getting out, it certainly would get out." In 2002, Victor H. Hutchison, a retired zoologist at the

University of Oklahoma The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two Territories became the state of Oklahom ...

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

critical thermal maximum Critical thermal maximum, in zoology, is the temperature for a given species above which most individuals respond with unorganized locomotion, subjecting the animal to likely death.R.W. McDiarmid, 1999 This concept is particularly relevant in perio ...

for many frog species has been determined by contemporary research experiments: as the water is heated by about 2 °F (about 1 °C), per minute, the frog becomes increasingly active as it tries to escape, and eventually jumps out if it can.

References

Cited references

* {{Good article Animal testing Cognitive inertia Cruelty to animals Fictional frogs Metaphors referring to animals Urban legends

As metaphor

In philosophy

Experiments and analysis

See also

References

Cited references