PROVIDENCE — Scientific sleuths from Brown University are in California trying to determine what makes the great jumping frogs of Calaveras County jump so far.

“They’re spectacular,” Manny Azizi, a postdoctoral fellow at Brown, said of the bullfrogs that compete in a traditional contest out there. The contest requires frogs to make three consecutive jumps. Then the total distance is measured. The record is 21 feet.

Mark Twain’s famous and fictional tale of a frog-jumping contest started the whole thing. It is now a real-life, annual event at the Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee in Angels City, Calif.

Off watching the bouncy amphibians perform are Thomas Roberts, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and team leader, and Emily Abbott and Henry Astley, researchers.

“Here, in the lab, we have been interested in trying to understand what determines frog jumping performance,” Azizi said. But the frogs in the lab don’t seem to jump as far as the Mark Twain contest entries. “We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing wrong,” he said.

Azizi said he stayed behind while the team set off for the West Coast because he didn’t want to miss his son’s second birthday on Saturday.

“He’s played with plenty of frogs,” he said.

tmorgan@projo.com