fan_1981
07-12-2004, 12:21 PM
source: www.snopes.com
In June 2004 the Iranian daily Etemaad reported that an unnamed woman from the south-eastern city of Iranshahr had given birth to a frog. According to that paper, the woman's gynaecologist confirmed that the lady in question, whose period had stopped for six months, had underwent sonography in May which showed she had a cyst in her abdomen and that following severe bleeding, she gave birth to a live grey frog accompanied with mud.
Numerous news outlets subsequently carried the story, but in the manner of reporting that an Iranian paper had run the item, not as a confirmation of the facts of the account.
If the photo of the frog (as initially provided by the BBC — it was later stripped from their online article and replaced by a map of Iraq) was accurate, it disproved the theory that the purported mother of Kermit came by her amphibian pregnancy through having swum in or drunk frog spawn, because the lily pad jumper so pictured was of a species not native to Iran.
In any event, it was always a case of news outlets repeating a weird story that had come to them, not of vetting the tale's claims. Humans cannot give birth to frogs, or snakes, or fish, or lizards, or octopuses — our biology rules it out.
Last updated: 9 July 2004
In June 2004 the Iranian daily Etemaad reported that an unnamed woman from the south-eastern city of Iranshahr had given birth to a frog. According to that paper, the woman's gynaecologist confirmed that the lady in question, whose period had stopped for six months, had underwent sonography in May which showed she had a cyst in her abdomen and that following severe bleeding, she gave birth to a live grey frog accompanied with mud.
Numerous news outlets subsequently carried the story, but in the manner of reporting that an Iranian paper had run the item, not as a confirmation of the facts of the account.
If the photo of the frog (as initially provided by the BBC — it was later stripped from their online article and replaced by a map of Iraq) was accurate, it disproved the theory that the purported mother of Kermit came by her amphibian pregnancy through having swum in or drunk frog spawn, because the lily pad jumper so pictured was of a species not native to Iran.
In any event, it was always a case of news outlets repeating a weird story that had come to them, not of vetting the tale's claims. Humans cannot give birth to frogs, or snakes, or fish, or lizards, or octopuses — our biology rules it out.
Last updated: 9 July 2004