I’d like to add that another important aspect of frog welfare is the welfare of frogs living in the wild, of which there might be something like hundreds of billions[1] to hundreds of trillions[2].[3]
I think the most tractable way to improve the welfare of as many wild frogs as soon as possible is to invest in efforts to establish the foundations of wild animal welfare science, explore avenues for translating wild animal welfare science into real-world policy change, and build grassroots support for such policies. Relevant orgs include:
[1] What’s a few Humanities’ worth of minds, between friends?
[2] Time flies when you’re counting seconds for hundreds of millennia!
[3] These estimates come from taking the total amphibian population estimates from Tomasik (2009) and Bar-On, Phillips, and Milo (2018) (Supplementary Material, page 39) and dividing them by 10. I don’t know if that’s reasonable—I just know there are way more salamanders out there than you’d think. My guess is it’s conservative, i.e., that frogs account for more than 10% of amphibians.
Thank you for this important post!
I’d like to add that another important aspect of frog welfare is the welfare of frogs living in the wild, of which there might be something like hundreds of billions[1] to hundreds of trillions[2].[3]
I think the most tractable way to improve the welfare of as many wild frogs as soon as possible is to invest in efforts to establish the foundations of wild animal welfare science, explore avenues for translating wild animal welfare science into real-world policy change, and build grassroots support for such policies. Relevant orgs include:
Wild Animal Initiative (where I work)
NYU’s Wild Animal Welfare Program, including their newly launched WILD Lab
Animal Ethics
Rethink Priorities
[1] What’s a few Humanities’ worth of minds, between friends?
[2] Time flies when you’re counting seconds for hundreds of millennia!
[3] These estimates come from taking the total amphibian population estimates from Tomasik (2009) and Bar-On, Phillips, and Milo (2018) (Supplementary Material, page 39) and dividing them by 10. I don’t know if that’s reasonable—I just know there are way more salamanders out there than you’d think. My guess is it’s conservative, i.e., that frogs account for more than 10% of amphibians.
Hi Cameron,
Did you see Chytrid Fungal Infection and Frog Welfare — EA Forum?
It would be great if you can respond to it too.
This is fascinating. Thank you for sharing!