Professor Huey Verse has spent the past five years studying the various calls of the Amazonian amphibians in their native habitat in order to discover if these simple creatures have a form of language.
"I have been living in a tent being bitten by species of insect new to science that I've been able to name," said Verse. "After a couple of years of being bitten by one Nasty Bastard, that's now it's official name. There's a family of closely related insects. I've also found a Bloodsucking Bastard and a Jesus! Huge Bastard."
Naming bloodsucking insects was not Verse's primary purpose in putting up with the hot humid conditions in the Amazon basin. He was there to use statistical techniques to work out if frogs had a language.
"The common joke is: 'Yes; it's French'," said Verse. "But I've heard it. Quite a few times. So don't bother."
Using state of the art recording equipment that picks up every nuance of a frog's call, plus top of the range computer equipment running cutting edge sound analysis software, Verse has collected over fifty thousand frog calls from nearly two hundred species. He has subjugated the calls to some of the most astute mathematics mankind has developed.
"I have found that frogs have three words," said Verse. "It appears to be all that they need to cover everything from mating to predator warnings."
According to Verse, these three words are "Ribbit", "Croak" and "Ribbet ribbet".
"I can't help but think that getting pissed and teaching Biology in Dorkiing would have been a better move," Verse said, bitterly.
