What was the 1983 case?

A woman developed an extreme fear of frogs after her lawn mower ran over and killed a group of them. The case appeared in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry in 1983, and it is the only published case the term has. The trigger is worth noting: she was not attacked by the animal, she killed it, which is not the route the conditioning account predicts.

What term do clinicians use?

The plain one. Psychiatric specialty literature writes fear of frogs rather than ranidaphobia or batrachophobia, which is unusual for this vocabulary and worth noting: where a fear has a real case behind it, the Greek name tends not to be the one used.

Does touching a frog cause warts?

No, though it is the persistent myth attached to frogs and toads, and it is one of the superstitions the fear has historically run on.

What did the Johannesburg Zoo survey find?

That old superstitions matter less than they did, and that modern children are more concerned with whether a frog is venomous or harmless. The question has moved from what the animal means to what it can do.

Where does ranidaphobia come from?

From Ranidae, the most widespread family of frogs, which makes it one of the few phobia names built on a taxonomic rank rather than a common noun. Chiroptophobia, for bats, is built the same way.

Has a fear of frogs ever been worth money?

Once, and a considerable amount of it. A man in Clarence, New York, sued the town and a development firm after runoff from a nearby development was diverted onto his land and brought the frogs with it. He was awarded a settlement of 1.6 million dollars, reported in April 2013, and the trade press described his ranidaphobia as something that might now be quieted.

Fear of Frogs (Ranidaphobia): Meaning, Causes & Symptoms

Fear of Frogs

Ranidaphobia

The Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry carried a case in 1983 about a woman whose extreme fear dated from one afternoon. She had been mowing, and the mower went over a group of frogs and killed them. That is the documented route in, and the pattern the literature records is the same: watching frogs die violently is where a phobia often starts.

The subject has two halves. One is a specific phobia, which goes by frog phobia or by ranidaphobia, a name taken from Ranidae, the frog family with the widest distribution. The other is a superstition, and it turns up in the folkways of a great many cultures. The psychiatric specialty literature uses the plain phrase, fear of frogs, rather than any specialised term, which is unusual in a field that names everything. Batrachophobia, meaning fear of amphibians, was recorded in a psychiatric dictionary in 1953.

What the superstitions say about frogs

Some cultures read the sight of a frog as a bad omen and others as a good one, which is about as reliable as omens get. The persistent myth in the English-speaking world is that touching frogs and toads gives a person warts.

That myth appears to be receding. A survey by researchers from the Johannesburg Zoo found that the old superstitions carry less weight now, and that modern children are concerned instead with whether a given frog is venomous or harmless, which is a question with an answer.

One use of the animal is not superstition at all. Portuguese shopkeepers put ceramic frogs in their windows to deter Roma people, where the object works as a marker of anti-Romani prejudice rather than as a charm.

How a frog fear reached a courtroom

The best-attested case of ranidaphobia in the sources is a lawsuit. American City and County reported in April 2013 that a man in Clarence, New York, had sued the town and a development firm over the frogs on his property, and that he had been awarded a settlement of 1.6 million dollars. The frogs arrived because water runoff from a nearby development had been diverted onto his land.

The report describes his ranidaphobia as something that may now be quieted. The word is being used for a legally recognised grievance whose remedy was money, which is not how any other term in this catalogue has been used.

It is also a case where the fear had a cause outside the person, and the cause was fixed by a court rather than a clinician.

What the health libraries add

The Cleveland Clinic's page, last reviewed in March 2022, describes an intense and irrational fear of frogs and toads, and gives two beliefs behind it:

that the amphibians are harmful or dangerous
that they are cursed It notes nightmares among the symptoms, which is unusual in a specific phobia description and matches the folklore the object carries.

The word itself circulates widely for a term with one published case. Wiktionary's citations run from a 2001 newspaper craft column reassuring readers that they now have no reason to suffer from it, through a teacher's interview in 2010 and a scouting column in 2011 listing it beside fear of snakes and fear of spiders, to a 2013 book on phobias that recounts the lawn-mower case and a student newspaper staff page in 2014.

Common questions

Questions about Ranidaphobia

What was the 1983 case?: A woman developed an extreme fear of frogs after her lawn mower ran over and killed a group of them. The case appeared in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry in 1983, and it is the only published case the term has. The trigger is worth noting: she was not attacked by the animal, she killed it, which is not the route the conditioning account predicts.
What term do clinicians use?: The plain one. Psychiatric specialty literature writes fear of frogs rather than ranidaphobia or batrachophobia, which is unusual for this vocabulary and worth noting: where a fear has a real case behind it, the Greek name tends not to be the one used.
Does touching a frog cause warts?: No, though it is the persistent myth attached to frogs and toads, and it is one of the superstitions the fear has historically run on.
What did the Johannesburg Zoo survey find?: That old superstitions matter less than they did, and that modern children are more concerned with whether a frog is venomous or harmless. The question has moved from what the animal means to what it can do.
Where does ranidaphobia come from?: From Ranidae, the most widespread family of frogs, which makes it one of the few phobia names built on a taxonomic rank rather than a common noun. Chiroptophobia, for bats, is built the same way.
Has a fear of frogs ever been worth money?: Once, and a considerable amount of it. A man in Clarence, New York, sued the town and a development firm after runoff from a nearby development was diverted onto his land and brought the frogs with it. He was awarded a settlement of 1.6 million dollars, reported in April 2013, and the trade press described his ranidaphobia as something that might now be quieted.

Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26