A rare act involving the South American Tree
Frog and several species of
tree-dwelling simians in the South American jungles. By inserting some portion of its body, usually the prehensile tail or its phallus (this is dependant, to an extent, on the
gender of the simian), into the mouth cavity of the
frog, the
monkey simultaneously demonstrates its dominance as well as its acceptance of its amphibian neighbor. The completion of this conjugal act is crucial to continuation of this odd symbiotic relationship, as the tree frogs will remove harmful insects from the
monkey's environment and the
monkey will act to distract or eliminate possible predators.
The act, first reported in 1892, is named in honor of Sir Curtis Matthews Froat, who provided a detail account of
frog-simian relations in a report to the Royal Geographical Society follow his five year expedition to the Peruvian Amazon.
Today, the term is used in popular culture to discribe a dominant symbiotic relationship, wherein both participants derive a benefit, but one of parties clearly controls the nature and extent of the partnership. It is working it way into urban dialect, as it is being used in Chicago and Atlanta to depict pimp-whore, dealer-user, kingpin-dealer, and rapper-
poser interactions.
