Eyeless Frogs, Two-Headed Turtles

Blinky News that a girl in Rensselaer County (that's upstate, city folks) has found a frog with no eyes has people freaking out some. Besides being creepy, though initial examinations lead wildlife experts to believe that the frog's eyeless nature is developmental rather pollution-related, the fact that another little girl found a two headed turtle in the county a few months ago makes people scream "What the hell is happening to our bucolic town?"

Gothamist's favorite animal mutated by pollution might be Blinky from the Simpsons. But the most searing TV Gothamist has seen about the ill effects of solution is the Diff'rent Strokes episode where Kimberly's hair turns green from collecting rain water in an copper bowl to wash her hair.

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By Jen Chung in Arts & Entertainment on July 22, 2003 3:36 PM

Comments [rss]

MIKE

u stink at writing information

keeley

ur website is shit

Miss Mousey's Husband

One jump ahead of you there, Rob.

Sterling

"increased levels of UV radiation" - sounds like we need to come up with some froggy sunblock.

Justin Case, Gothamist Science

Two headed reptiles, while not exactly common, are nothing to get too worked up about. Two headed snakes turn up in the news every couple of years. They're more or less analagous to conjoined twins in humans.

As for the frogs with extra legs, this is an ongoing problem. The latest thinking is that a parasite is responsible. However, increased levels of UV radiation reaching ground level as a result of human activity are suspected of lowering the frogs' resistance to disease. Declining amphibian populations are an issue all over the world, and no one has yet come up with a definite cause.

Sterling

Rensselaer County has a lot of rust belt development along the Hudson (as does Albany, on the other side), but is mostly farmland and forest when you get inland a mile or two. Raymertown (where this happened) is definitely outside the industrial area.

erikka

This isn't the first incident of mutations--back in the mid-ninties, 1996 I believe, there were several cases of frogs growing extra limbs and other mutations in WI.