The report of an Alaska frog’s death was greatly exaggerated

Things didn’t look good for the five frozen wood frogs. The palm-sized amphibians were hibernating in a box outside Brian Barnes’ Fairbanks home a few decades ago. Barnes, director of the Institute of Arctic Biology, and his students were in his living room checking a temperature gauge he recently plucked from the “frog corral.” When he plugged the device into his computer, a graph spilled across the screen. The temperature at frog level, under a few inches of snow and moss, had dipped to 10 degrees in December. “That guy’s...