Welcome to the Saturday edition of The Conversation U.S.’s Daily newsletter.
There are days that by the time I reach a certain point in the afternoon I feel like there’s no way I can make another decision. I’m all decisioned out. And it turns out people aren’t the only animals that experience this kind of cognitive limit.
Biologist Claire Therese Hemingway and her colleagues recently ran experiments to see how female gray tree frogs responded when confronted with the mating calls of multiple male frogs. More calls meant more indecision. And this choice overload, with females frozen in the face of too many options, can mean less attractive male frogs get to mate.
These “cognitive constraints are a general feature of animal decision-making,” Hemingway writes. Something to ponder the next time you’re swiping, swiping, swiping through the frogs on a dating app to search for your prince?
This week we also liked articles about why white nationalism appeals to so many young white men, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, and the long-lasting bond between the poet Langston Hughes and Nina Simone, the singer known as “the High Priestess of Soul.”
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