Frog Butt Obsession? Yeah. It’s a Thing.

The post Frog Butt Obsession? Yeah. It’s a Thing. appeared first on A-Z Animals.

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Butts are everywhere, but there’s something about animal behinds that drive people nuts. Be it their odd, anachronistic look or just a human tendency to anthropomorphize any creature, animals often have cute bottoms that make us swoon. Perhaps we admire the vulnerability of an animal butt because we do our best to hide our own.

One of the cutest butts in the natural world undoubtedly belongs to the desert rain frog. It’s small, saggy, and looks like Hank Hill‘s bottom in “King of the Hill.” There’s just something special about its concave shape; it activates the brain’s neurons. But what is a desert rain frog and why do their butts have a devoted following on the internet? Watch the video above and we will explore the topic further.

What is a Desert Rain Frog?

Before we explore their adorable butts, we should talk about rain frogs in general. This species, known as the desert rain frog or Boulenger’s short-headed frog (Breviceps macrops) is a plump little subspecies of the Brevicipitidae family. They are found in Namibia and South Africa, where they thrive in small strips of sandy soil next to the ocean.

Appearance-wise, the rain frog is bulbous, with bulging eyes, short limbs, and webbed toes. They live from 4 and 14 years and typically measure between 1.5 and 2.5 inches. The desert rain frog is nocturnal and uses the nighttime hours to dig in the sand and eat moths, beetles, ants, and insect larvae. It’s unusual among frog species for two reasons. First, desert rain frogs develop directly from eggs and skip over the tadpole stage of gestation — they’re born as frogs. Second, they do not require water in their habitat to survive, which is rare for amphibians. Instead, they quench their thirst by burrowing underground and absorbing the water through their skin.

The relationship between desert rain frogs and humans is relatively harmonious. In the past, opencast diamond mining threatened their natural habitat, but changes in mining locations have shifted the rain frogs’ status from “vulnerable” to “near threatened.” Though desert rain frogs are known to emit a high-pitched squeal when threatened, they are usually quite docile in human hands. Does that account for the many depictions of their butts out there?

The Rain Frog Butt Phenomenon

Leave it to the internet to show us something we never knew was missing from our lives. Case in point: the rain frog butt. As shown in the video above, the desert rain frog’s butt is charming in its appearance. It’s laid bare, unassuming, yet uninhibited. With its inward shape, it’s not the type of butt most people wish they had, yet it seems remarkably human. Something about it enchants.

A cursory Google search on the animal butt phenomenon yields little result. It seems that one frog butt photo made the rounds between 2018-2020 before the phenomenon exploded on social media. The internet loves animals as much as it loves randomness, so by a quirk of meme magic, those two concepts joined forces and produced a laundry list of cute animal butts for our viewing pleasure.

The most fruitful result explores the philosophy behind the internet’s love of frog butts. As this article points out, the bare frog butt speaks to things deep in the human soul: a love of animals and finding absurd humor in unexpected places. Everything from cuteness to body positivity may play a part in this growing trend, but whatever the case, frog butts have developed a cult-like following. They are appearing in memes, social media posts, and even on t-shirts.

Say what you will about the rain frog’s butt, but we think it has an undeniable, humorous appeal. In a world full of insecurity and tension, the rain frog’s butt remains utterly unapologetic.

The post Frog Butt Obsession? Yeah. It’s a Thing. appeared first on A-Z Animals.