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Why don’t we like to be helped?
A lesson from amphibians
While outside doing yard work today, I came across four small frogs trapped in one of the basement window wells along the house’s foundation.
It is common for small animals like frogs and mice to make a poorly placed hop into places they cannot escape.
It is less common for them to survive, leaving me to dispose of their decomposing carcasses weeks later.
The old softie in me didn’t want those frogs to suffer the same fate. I grabbed an old butterfly net and placed it in the window well. Wary of this foreign object, they hopped around trying to avoid it.
One by one, I captured them by placing the net a few inches in front of a frog, then gave it a gentle nudge from behind with my finger, prompting it to hop right into the net. I then let the frogs loose in a grove of bushes nearby.
They sat in the grass stunned, not realizing they were just saved from certain death. However, they did not see me as their savior — they still perceived me as a threat. They quickly hopped into the bushes to live another day doing whatever frogs do.
Untrained animals do not have the brain capacity to know when someone is trying to help them. Their natural instincts view anything unfamiliar as a danger.
