The BBC news item, Puzzle over three-headed frog (originally titled "'Warning' over three-headed frog") spawned this story that swept the news media and the weblog circuit over the week following March 5th 2004. Briefly: staff and pre-school children at the Green Umbrella day nursery, Weston-super-Mare, UK, found the above. After they'd taken photos and a video, it escaped. The BBC took up the story, citing one of their own wildife experts, biologist and presenter Mike Dilger, as "stunned" and saying "it could be an early warning of environmental problems" (they published the same factoid in their CBBC Newsround children's section). From there, the tale snowballed to newspapers worldwide.Short answer: neither. In my view, this is just multiple amplexus (aka a mating ball), typical frog and toad mating behaviour. For comparison, see these very clear photos of a frog three-way and frog four-way, from David Jones' excellent photo-journal Frog and Pond Diary. Note the early March date of these: in southern England, frogs spawn at this time of year, which supports the amplexus theory.Mating of Anurans (frogs and toads) involves the male tightly clasping the female - this is called amplexus - for hours or even days, prior to externally fertilising her eggs.

So we know what we're talking about, first check out this image of amplexus of toads, to see the posture. Here are many more pictures of frog amplexus. The grip is very strong; the male develops special pads on his thumbs to hold on, and won't let go even if the couple is picked up and handled. Some frogs, as 'axolotlman' comments in this Les Monde des reptiles thread, Grenouille tricéphale, secrete during amplexus an adhesive mucus so sticky that it's impossible to separate them without tearing the skin. Multiple amplexus is common, when more than one male grips the same female (or sometimes, mistakenly, another male).

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