Frog Bladders Hunt and Remove Foreign Objects

A bizarre discovery shows some frogs and toads can grow their bladders around objects lodged deep within their bodies, ultimately peeing them out.

Zoologists discovered the oddity after implanting frogs with tiny radio transmitters, which inexplicably migrated to the bladder. The team came across the amphibian ability while studying heat regulation in Australian green tree frogs. The team implanted tiny radio transmitters deep in the amphibians’ peritoneal cavity, which lies just outside the peritoneum — a membrane containing the major organs of most animals.

After a few weeks of living in the wild, however, about 75 percent of the frogs’ transmitters were found in their bladders. The scientists also found some on the ground without any signs of frog death, including being eaten by a predator, disease or other explanations.

Back in the lab, the team put their hypothesis to the test. They enlisted five green tree frogs and five cane toads, implanting small inert beads in each the same way they implanted the radio transmitters. Each tree frog expelled its bead within 23 days. One cane toad also gave its bead the boot, and the beads in the other four toads had migrated to their bladders.

Read more in the original article here.

Lemurs' Knack for Numbers

An interesting CNN video on Lemurs:

Potty Training Orphan Sloths

Potty training at the sloth orphanage from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

World's Largest indoor pet?

See the article here.

Invasive Species

Wired magazine recently ran an article focusing on invasive species.  The article was prompted by reports of the U.S. Navy "bombing" Guam with dead, drugged mice in an effort to kill off the invasive Brown tree snake (shown below).  Interesting!

Brown tree snake:

Kudzu:

Northern Snakehead:

Asian carp:

See more in the original article here.

Mimic Octopus

Video of the always-interesting mimic octopus:

50-Million-Year-Old Insect Trove Found in Indian Amber

A collection of amber deposits unearthed in northwest India has opened a spectacular window into insect life some 50 million years ago.  Amber is the geological name for fossilized tree resin, which often preserves insects that get stuck in it.

Although the new amber didn’t yield bizarre new species, it’s still loaded with fossil treasures. More than 700 insect species representing 55 families of insects have been identified inside. Among them are ancient bees, termites and ants — highly social insects that form some of the world’s most complex societies.

In the years to come, scientists will compare these ancient specimens to modern forms and develop a deeper understanding of how these creatures have evolved.

Original article here.

Happy Halloween from One Spooky Sugar Glider

Read more about Sugar gliders here.

Physics of Wet Dogs Shake Out in High-Speed Videos

Scientists have written "The Wet-Dog Shake,” where they attempt to calculate the optimum speed at which dogs should shake to most efficiently dry their fur.

The team built a mathematical model of the processes involved, reasoning that surface tension between the water and the dog’s hair is what keeps the dog wet. Overcoming that tension requires a centripetal force that exceeds it.  As centripetal force varies with distance from the centre of the creature, its radius is therefore crucial to work out the speed of the oscillations.

Check out the above video to see the slow-motion dog shaking, and read more about the experiment in the referenced article here.

Sloth’s Strange Walk Is Really Just Upside Down

Two-toed sloths spend a lot of time hanging upside down from tropical tree branches in Central and South America, and looking very odd. But new research suggests they move just like a mirror image of many upright four-legged creatures.

Mammals seem to move their legs in very standardized fashion during locomotion, whether walking on land, on branches or suspended under branches.  What differs is the way muscles are arranged and attached, which can completely alter the functionality of limbs.

Sloths don’t grasp branches but instead suspend themselves from tree limbs with long, hook-like claws on their sideways-oriented hands and feet. Given how weird sloths are, it seemed possible they may have evolved a different way of moving from other mammals.

To investigate whether strange anatomy translated to strange locomotion, scientists used video and x-rays to see inside sloths as they moved along a wooden pole and a motorized “treadpole” they were trained to move along for a snack.

They found that the sloths didn’t simply lumber along the branches at a slow-and-steady pace.  Their velocity varied, and they used several different gaits while moving. In the “exploratory gait,” the sloths assumed an inverted crouch position in which they held their nose close to the pole, while in the “traveling gait” they extended their arms further to increase their stride.

Read more in the original article here.