A TikTok video of a U.K. teen with the username “Thinfrog” has been doing rounds on the internet in which he declared that he has gathered more than 1.4 million frog eggs and is now going to create a “frog army”. He said in the video that this is going to be a record-making trend in history, and for this, he has acquired the whole space in his backyard to allocate these eggs. However, biological scientists are not happy with this crazy act. According to them, it will bring a lot of negative consequences and will also harm the species as a whole.
The video has crossed tens of millions of views, and in this era of technology, the majority of the acts are merely done for the sake of views on the internet, independent of the impact that it will have on society. He said in his video, “I wanted to create the largest frog army in history. Next year I will create a giant pond for ten million frogs. ” His comment box is flooded with users asking him to teach the entire process from scratch on how to collect the eggs and how to start their army. Definitely, it is influencing the people out there.
According to Tierra Curry, who is a conservation biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based non-profit, “It makes me cringe. Instead of helping, [these TikTok users] are actually hurting the animals they’re releasing and all the animals in the environment that they’re releasing them into — it’s creating a vector for disease and invasive species. ” Moreover, it is interesting to note that a similar incident was reported recently when a user released a swarm of 100 million ladybugs in Central Park, but then someone sued him legally for this act. In return, he ran away from the country for the fear of being arrested.
In a similar way, BBC Wildlife marine biologist Dawood Qureshi said, “Breeding that many frogs is definitely not good for the environment, and such an influx of predators could limit the number of insects, which could have a negative impact on important processes such as pollination.” And we completely agree with this, as it would just create havoc in the surroundings without any benefit to the community.
