![jenny vr jenny vr](https://globetrender.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/4O0A7033-scaled.jpg)
“But even while the male is on the female, he still foot flags,” said Doris Preininger, a researcher at the Vienna Zoo and author on the paper. When a female wanders to the stream, she exhibits little preference and will mate with the first male she sees. In the wild, it appears foot-flagging only has meaning among male frogs. The new paper “provides an insightful perspective about how this hormone affects a neat visual display, foot-flagging, but also about what those changes may mean for the frogs seeing them,” Ximena Bernal, a behavioral ecologist at Purdue University who was not involved with the research, wrote in an email. This flamboyant foot display, intensified by the sex hormone, suggests the frogs evolved a way to exploit their competitors’ unusual visual system to appear more dangerous to other frogs. The hormone acts on the muscles in the frog’s leg to exaggerate the gesture, meaning the more testosterone coursing through the frog, the bigger the foot-flagging display. In a paper published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers reveal that they could amplify the foot-flagging behavior of Bornean rock frogs by giving the frogs a dose of testosterone.
![jenny vr jenny vr](https://images.indianexpress.com/2020/08/Baba-Yaga-1200-1.jpg)
Now, researchers suggest some male frogs have evolved to take advantage of their froggy brethren’s fears by kicking and lowering their legs in a gesture that looks a lot like an anti-worm signal, as a way to frighten their competition. Frogs likely evolved this visual system to hunt worms and stay safe from larger predators.