this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
438 points (98.5% liked)

Science Memes

11217 readers
2815 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

Hot take, English got it wrong. I've never heard a frog make a sound like "ribbit". German or Turkish, on the other hand, seems like a sensible and appropriate sound a frog would make.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I've definitely heard some sort of frog/toad make the "ribbit" sound, but I'd say the German "kwaak" is probably more common. The various Asian sounds seem odd to me though. I suppose it is entirely possible the frogs makes different sounds there.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

IIRC different species of frogs make wildly different sounds, so all of the languages might just be what type of frog lives in that country.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Hot take, English got it wrong. I've never heard a frog make a sound like "ribbit".

It's a real thing. Super common in the Southern US when I was a kid.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, that's the kind of frog sound I've always known to be most prominent. I was also wondering just how much the most common species in a region affects the onomatopoeia, along with the language used.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Have you ever set by a creek on a warm summer night? It's more like riib riib riib riib, but I can see where ribbit came from

Edit: found this which is pretty close to what I'm talking about.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

When I was young and lived in the country with a big pond and marshland, most of the frogs went “THUMMM” at night (like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6qHBRXLHXnc) and the others were more like a high pitch creaky door or one of those hollow wooden frogs with the back ridges that you play with a stick, like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p-XPYXuCOjg

I’ve never lived near any sort of frogs that I’d describe as making a riib sound

I think this is the sound you are talking about? It’s kinda harder to pick out in your video for me, but there’s a distinct riib sound there over the top of everything else that’s absent from the other video. If that’s not the sound you are talking about, I’m pretty sure it is the source of “ribbit”. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8fJWGKbXw4Y

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yep, that's a far better example of what I menat.

Where I grew up if it made a deeper noise it was a bull frog. Normally a Ruuuurp like call.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Counterpoint: "Kwaak" is the sound a duck makes, so frogs gotta say something else.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Some frogs ribbit. Other frogs croak.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Fun fact: Most frogs don't say ribbit, but one of the earliest film sound libraries included a frog that does say ribbit, and so that sound is the sound of a frog in many films and television programs, but not in nature documentaries which record their own audio.

So much of the English speaking world, far, far more broadly than the spread of that type of frog, think frogs typically say ribbit.

If you watch a nature documentary about frogs, you'll hear a vast array of different sounds, and this map will make much more sense.