Frog or Toad? | Hacker News Reader

Frog or Toad?

downpour.games

62 pointswillf53 comments

Hi there! I'm the creator of this game, happy to answer any questions people might have. This is a total surprise, thanks so much for playing!

This is a good thing you made, and you should feel good about it

This was really lovely to say, thank you!

Thanks for the game! It is a very entertaining and is highly educational, probably thanks to the pictures ... And a good way to show us fascinating species (like the purple frog) that we would otherwise not bother to look up. Except for the most abundant species available in Europe, it seems quite unlikely that people would be willing to give these species "common names" in English. This does not decrease the value of the game at all, but it is perhaps a tad misleading what the objective is: are we to guess a) whether a particular specie is named as a "frog" or "toad" in its common name (folk taxonomy) or b) where they belong in taxonomy (is it a Bufonidae or not)? If we go for a), that is perhaps not as exciting to show species endemic to places without tons of native English speakers (like Thailand etc.). But this does not decrease from the value of the game at all. I think it shows a very efficient approach to gamify and teach taxonomy to people.

Would it be of any use to show a success rate indicator perhaps or a feedback whether the guess was correct or not?

Thanks so much for the kind words and thoughtful comment.

Regarding the objective, it's targeting the most common understanding of "frog" and "toad", which for most people will be folk taxonomy, and they probably aren't aware that there's not a scientific taxonomic distinction. So from your list, I think most people will approach it as option "a". However you might be happy to know that when selecting species, there's a couple that are in there because they belong to taxa that contain both "frogs" and "toads", so "b" would be quite difficult!

In that it goes for "a", it's really intended to show that folk taxonomy, like most ways people categorise things, works until it doesn't. Really important to me to note that it's not trying to favour "scientific" taxonomy over folk, though. There's evidence that practicing folk taxonomy, by observing and categorising what you see in nature around you, helps build connectedness with nature, which has a lot of benefits, and making people aware of folk taxonomy as a thing that they contribute to is the ultimate objective.

Oh and regarding the score: I chose not to track or display a score because it didn't feel in the spirit of the game, and besides that, there's no fair way to score it. It can't be based on their common name, as shown in the game itself, for example. You could argue that the only way to win is to always press frog, since all toads are frogs by scientific taxonomy, but I don't want to say folk taxonomy is invalid. But really, I don't think the score matters to the learning objective.

Which is why the game doesn't track it, there is in fact not even two buttons.

I see, thanks for the answer!

Very fascinating. This is common in bird taxonomy as well, for example, with doves/pigeons, or egrets/herons

Very disappointed by the absence of score in the end, I feel my effort was stolen.

I don't bother about real taxonomy

I've got terrible news for you: inspect the source in browser.

What's in there? I'm afraid to be fooled again - I will inspect and find nothing

The game doesn’t track score, to the extent that frog and toad are not even separate buttons

cruel prank

I wish there was a blurb on what makes a frog vs toad so we can be educated on how to distinguish vs just blind guessing.

Or if there isn't any, say so and maybe some history on why.

There's an explanation at the end of the game!

I think I went through a few of them and it became clear I didn't know the difference at all and didn't feel I'd get an explanation of why so stopped there.

It would have been better for each result to talk about why it was classified as a toad or frog.

There is no explanation to why, it’s all cultural and historical. There’s no distinction in conventional taxonomy

TIL

But I wouldn't have playing the game because I stopped midway.

Maybe have a progress count like out of 10 or 5 if your intent is to show people that.

I would like something that tells me how to tell the difference between the two based on the images.

One of the things the game is trying to communicate is that this isn’t possible :)

My guesses were so consistently wrong that I at first thought the site was making up frog/toad names based on the opposite of my answer.

Then I guessed "toad" for what turned out to be "a false toad (Telmatobufo bullocki)" and my head exploded a bit

Taxonomically there is no rule about the differences between toad/frog. Generally “frogs” are considered to be more aquatic than toads, but I’m pretty sure the naming is not entirely consistent amongst species. Funny game, it definitely throws some hard ones at you.

That is very much the intent of the game! Frog vs toad is what's known as "folk taxonomy", taxonomy based on people's informal observations and characterisations, and not on the principles of scientific taxonomy. There's a lot of common everyday examples of folk taxonomy that people don't realise aren't "scientific", and are very confident about, and the progression of species in this game was intended to really poke at what people know makes a frog and a toad.

I suppose I had never really thought about the difference between a frog and a toad, and after playing this game, it is clear that I have absolutely no idea what it might be.

That's the point of the game. There is no taxonomic difference.

I played this for a couple of minutes, foolishly thinking I’d be quite good, before exclaiming ‘oh, what the hell is the difference!?’ and quitting it in frustration.

The toad's abode is by the road

The frog's abode is boggy

That is why the toad seems dry

And why the frog is soggy.

- Jack Prelutsky

Reminds me of one of my favorite Seinfeld clips "Frog is Wrong" [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0MtSBKgUNk

A cheatsheet?

https://aqua.org/stories/2023-09-27-mistaken-identities-frog...

I’ve always told my daughter- bumpy skin is a toad, smooth skin is a frog

But that clearly is not the case I just found out.

Seems to offer very little help with the game

I feel this is a vindication of the Frog And Toad books by Arnold Lobel: It makes perfect sense for them to happily cohabitate. :p

They are even running a startup together: https://medium.com/frog-and-toad-are-cofounders/technical-de...

My own assumption is that frogs are thinner, with finer lines in the shapes of their bodies, while toads are large, wide, and beefy with short legs. So that's how I made my choices. Wrong choices.

The tree toad gets everyone

There also exists a tree frog, but that one does look froggy

There are only 2 toads. Green and brown. Everything else is frog.

there were more toads than that. but i noticed there were more frogs than toads. so if you just keep hitting frog, you should score over 50% (though there is no score displayed at the end), which was better than my "informed" guessing

I have never felt so cheated playing a game. Somehow it's even worse because they don't tell you your score.

I thought I was starting to figure it out then I selected "toad" and was told it was a "toad-skinned frog"

FML

I love how the first two make you over-confident and then wham, you're lucky to get much above 50%.

I think I got much less than 50%.

I failed on calibration...

I thought there was an alternative to Toad, the Oracle development software lol.

Nice collection of species! I think the Suriname frog (toad?) is my favourite.

> it is a toad skinned frog

Throws phone on the floor and goes outside.

> It is a toad skinned frog (Walkerana phynoderma)

Oh, come on, that's not fair.

> It is a Darien stubfoot toad OR Toad Mountain harlequin frog (Atelopus certus)

I think the unfairness is the USP!

This is somehow fantastically entertaining. Well done.

Right up there with “Butterfly or Moth”

Crocodile or Alligator?

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