The Double Life Of A Frog-Loving Spy
Spying On Frogs Thomas Wydra via Wikimedia Commons Nature gets down and dirty with the legacy of a prolific amphibian researcher/spook. This has all the makings of a grand tale: A spy leading a double life. An exotic locale. And…an obsession with frogs? It turns out prolific amphibian researcher Edward Taylor, who died in 1978, led quite the life. "The elder herpetologist had logged 23 years in the field over his lifetime, collecting more than 75,000 specimens around the world, and naming hundreds of new species," Brendan Borrell writes in Nature. And yet, that isn't the most interesting part of his legacy: "He was a racist curmudgeon beset by paranoia - possibly a result of his mysterious double life as a spy for the US government." His extensive career obsessively cataloging new species of frogs, lizards and snakes, mostly in the Philippines, took precedent over anything else in his life, Borrell...