{"id":587585,"date":"2026-09-02T04:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T04:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/587585\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T04:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T04:32:12","slug":"frogs-make-poor-mating-choices-when-overwhelmed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/587585\/","title":{"rendered":"Frogs Make Poor Mating Choices When Overwhelmed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Romantic overload isn&#8217;t just a human problem; for one tree frog species, too many suitors can mean making a bad choice, or none at all. A new study on Cope&#8217;s gray tree frogs in Tennessee finds that females are far better at zeroing in on the &#8220;best&#8221; male when the options are limited. Researchers tested 60 females in a sound chamber, offering either two, four, or eight recorded mating calls, per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/choices-female-frogs-sex-mating-calls\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Science News<\/a>. Especially long calls, linked to better survival odds for offspring, are usually preferred.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        When there were just two calls, 77% of the frogs hopped toward the speaker playing the longer, more desirable call, per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/environment\/female-treefrog-mating-confusion\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Popular Science<\/a>. With four options, that dropped to about half; with eight calls, only one in five chose properly, according to the study published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/iscience\/fulltext\/S2589-0042(26)02464-8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">iScience<\/a>. Decision time also stretched out, and some frogs (17% of those confronted with eight calls) simply didn&#8217;t choose at all. The findings suggest &#8220;choice overload&#8221; may help explain why less impressive males still manage to contribute to the gene pool.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Romantic overload isn&#8217;t just a human problem; for one tree frog species, too many suitors can mean&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1391,28623,289209,111,139,69,147,12214,406],"class_list":["post-587585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-frogs","tag-gene-pool","tag-mating","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-tennessee","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}