Why Frogs Don’t Get Fat: Predators, Fear and Feeding in the Wild

November 15, 2018 – February 4, 2019

Imagine that it's the middle of the night and you are surrounded by predators. You think that you can hear them, and maybe you can smell them, but it's dark and you can't see them. You think that you can see their eyes, but they keep moving. Are they close or far away?

What would you do? Would you hide? Or run? Or freeze? What if you hadn't eaten all day, and you needed to search for food? Would you settle for the easiest food that you could find, even if it wasn't very good? Or would you spend more time searching for food, risking everything?

These are the situations most animals are faced with every day. Surrounded by things that want to catch and eat them. And it affects everything that they do, especially how, where, and when they eat. Because when they are eating, prey animals let their guard down and are more vulnerable to being caught and eaten themselves.

In the exhibit Why Frogs Don't Get Fat: Predators, Fear and Feeding in the Wild we examine what it's like to live in the real world of nature. To be faced with finding food when everywhere you turn there is something that might eat you.

Why Frogs Don't Get Fat: Predators, Fear and Feeding in the Wild is on view in Leonardo's Kitchen, a gallery dedicated to changing exhibitions based on research, scholarship and creative activity of Texas Tech faculty and students. This exhibition focuses on the work of James Carr, professor, Breanna Harris, research assistant professor, and Peter Keyel, assistant professor all in the Department of Biological Sciences. The exhibit is funded by the National Science Foundation IOS #1656734.

To experience an online version of this exhibition, please click here.