PRINCES, FROGS AND EVOLUTION
By Tom Taylor
The scientific community has been rocked recently by a new theory about the origin of frogs. Recent
discoveries of ancient paintings have shown that practically all handsome princes in times past wore
green. Also, some old literature has surfaced regarding a mysterious vendetta held by a wicked witch
against said princes. This has led some writers to speculate at least some of the green frogs living today
are actually descendants of princes, turned into frogs by a witch many centuries ago. They point out that
the “fingers” on the front feet of a green frog have some resemblance to human fingers; and a frog’s
extended body has an uncanny resemblance to the human form.
The theory made a lot of sense to me actually; but I wanted to get a professional opinion and went to
discuss it with my favorite straw man scientist, Professor Smith. (Not his real name. His real name is
Elbert Nogginer.) “Professor Smith,” I said, “what about this new theory of frogs coming from handsome
princes? Sounds good, huh?”
“Nonsense!” he said. “We scientists know that frogs evolved from a finned marine vertebrate.”
“Huh?”
“Fish, my good man. They came from fish!”
“How in the world did they do that?” I said. And then, “Wait, I know! There must have been lots of
mutations over a billion years, right? And the fish lost their gills and developed lungs, and muscular hind
legs, and one day they just jumped right out of the water... uh, wait a minute. Or did they develop lungs
after they jumped out or... no...”
Smith gave me a look of intellectual pity. “Tom, we know they developed from an earlier marine
ancestor.”
“So mutations did it, right?”
“Well, uh...” Smith, a very honest straw man, paused a moment and lit his pipe. “To be honest, Tom,
there’s some controversy about that. We know mutations play a part in the variations within a species,
as in the canine family for example. We know now the different breeds of dog came from genetic
information contained in the genes of the original wolf parents. But, uh, some of my colleagues have
pointed out, for one species to evolve into another, new genetic information would have to be added at
various points in the process. And, uh, mutations can’t do that. They can only re-arrange or degrade
what was already there.”
“Oh,” I said. “Then it sounds like a lot of mutations would cause a species to die out, instead of
evolving.”
“Well, exactly. And so there’s some doubt about what, er, biological mechanism accounted for
evolution. We don’t know of anything at present... uh, but we know there must have been some
mechanism, because we know things did evolve...”
“Oh. Well, if you know it, there must be a lot of evidence in the fossil layers, huh?”
Professor Smith bit down hard on his pipe. “Doggone it, Tom, I wish you hadn’t made me an honest
straw man! So I have to tell you, all the creatures in the fossil layers appear as fully formed, distinct
species. Now, if evolution occurred, we should find billions of obvious transitional links between all
species, right? But the few discoveries we’ve claimed as links have all been very controversial and
doubtful; and a few have been outright frauds... Drat! This honesty thing is killing me!” Smith took a
deep breath and plunged on. “And that’s the way it is with frogs. They appear in the fossil layers as fully-
formed frogs, practically identical to the ones living today, with... with...” his voice trailed off, “no hint of
any evolution.”
I was getting a bit confused at this point. “Then how do you scientists know frogs came from fish?”
“Because where else could they have come from?”
“From handsome princes!”
“Oh don’t be foolish,” said Smith. “There’s absolutely no process known to man that could change a
prince into a frog!”
“Well, you just said there’s no known process for evolution either.”
Smith dropped his pipe at that, and we paused a moment to put out an incipient straw fire. “Okay,”
he coughed. “But, Tom, you realize a prince being turned into a frog has never been observed in all of
history.”
“Well, maybe,” I said. “But has anybody ever observed one species evolve into another one?”
“Of course not. You would have to live a billion years to observe that.”
“So nobody has ever seen evolution happening?”
“Of course not.”
“Well,” I said, “if nobody’s ever seen it, and the fossil layers don’t show it, and there’s no natural
mechanism for it, what makes you think it happened?”
Smith stopped suddenly; and a strange look like a deer caught in the headlights came over him. He
went into a defensive trance and began to softly mutter things like “similarities in morphological
characteristics,” and “long periods of stasis,” and “punctuated equilibrium.” As I slowly backed toward the
door, he solemnly intoned, “We scientists know evolution happened because all other scientists know it
happened...”
“That sure sounds scientific to me,” I said as I quietly closed the door. And then, under my breath,
“and that prince-to-frog theory is sounding more scientific all the time.”