22 Funny Frogs for Folks Who Need a Leap to Joy

Our folklore and fairy tales have frogs everywhere, like it's a swamp of historic stories from all over the world.

Most people don't even consider frogs when it comes to answering the question, "What animal is a pillar of human storytelling?" Not saying other animals don't count, but frogs are usually forgotten. Take the classic Brothers Grimm tale of the frog and the princess - which is very different from the Disney adaptation, but is still so well-known to be adapted by Disney. That's saying something. But besides this, many other cultures from around the world have stories revolving around these ribbing swampy creatures.

In Russian folklore there's an inverted version, The Frog Princess, where a prince's arrow lands in a swamp and is picked up by a frog who is actually a Vasilisa the Wise (a name for a resourceful heroine in many folk stories), a princess under a spell. And in Germany, there's Puddocky (derived from the German for "toad", Padde), that tells the story of Parsley, a beautiful girl turned into a toad by a witch, who helps a young prince with impossible tasks before regaining her human form.

Even as far as Korea there are froggy tales - The Green Frog is a cautionary tale about a frog who never listened to his mother and always did the opposite of what he was told. When his mother dies, she asks to be buried by the river - expecting him to do the opposite and bury her on the hill - but he obeys her for the first and last time, leading to frogs croaking by the river when it rains out of worry.

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Alright, some memes in, let us tell you of another old froggy tale from the other edge of the world - Japan.
In Japanese folklore there's the tale of The Two Frogs - one frog is from Kyoto and the other one is from Osaka. They decide to see the other's city, like two friends who went off the different colleges. They meet halfway on a mountain, and in an attempt to see their destinations, they stand on their hind legs while holding each other. However, because their eyes are on the back of their heads, they end up looking at the hometown they just left, deciding the cities are identical. Ending up like most college-separated friendships, not seeing each other again.
The moral of the story is that premature judgment, poor perspective, and lack of foresight can make us miss out on new experiences. By forgetting their eyes were on the back of their heads, the frogs mistakenly saw their hometowns as identical, wasting their journey and highlighting that "the grass is not always greener" - which is globally true.
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Of course we're 5, the screaming frog. We're all “get out of our swamp” mood.
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Here's another froggy tale, less known. It's the story of Aglebemu, the Giant Frog - a myth from the Wabanaki people, Native American people from the the northeastern US.
In this legend, a giant frog named Aglebemu (or Kci Cekolhs) dams the St. John River, causing a drought. The culture hero Glooskap defeats the frog, releasing the water and transforming the monster into the first bullfrog.
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