The Frog as Air Traffic Controller
Please understand, this is meaningless trivia, but trivia is the salt which makes the soup taste better. Also no offence to TTK but the suggestion, further down, to employ frogs as defence personell could be considered but probably not taken seriously by our authoritarian Government due to a lack of imagination.
Where to begin?
I often speak to an old friend who lives near the city of Nuremberg in Germany. During our conversations she has said on more than one occasion, "a plane is coming, can you hear the frog"?".
Neither do the Germans refer to the French like we do as frogs neither do they normally call aeroplanes frogs but the person I am talking to does have a small pond in her garden where at least one frog lives. Over the phone one can easily hear a frog quacking. This is probably not unusual but it is unusual for somebody to link this with approaching aircraft.
Curiosity killed the cat which in this case led me to calling on the assistance of the FlightAware web-site to see if she was right about approaching aircraft. FlightAware displays in real time all allöcraft transmitting their altitude, course and speed. sometims including destination and flight plan information. So fromm this we could see that she was not spinning a yarn. Whenever a plane came into the vicinity the frog would Quack. As an early warning instrument entirely useless because you and also frogs do not hear approaching aircraft until they actually pass over or at least point their rear end at you. Interestingly enough though is that they do register aircraft even at 30,000 feet.
Nuremberg lies on a busy flight route and aircraft travelling from the UK to places like Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Tirana and Mumbai are all detectable and yes, frog gets loud.
Does this have any practical usage? probably not, but who knows. Animals have been used by armies for centuries and certainly could be a cheap boost to the UK's air defence systems. |
| London: 3. June 2025: -pw- |
| Source: WessexTimes |
| The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect WessexTimes editorial stance. |
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