| Title | Frog Eats Beetle, Beetle Escapes Alive through Frog's Butt | |
| Date | Sunday August 09 2020, @10:04AM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the passing-interest dept. | ||
Frog eats beetle, beetle escapes alive through frog's butt:
We've all eaten something that seems to run right through us, but rarely do our meals get to live another day once they leave our bodies. Yet that's exactly what happens when frogs snack on the aquatic beetle Regimbartia attenuata.
In a new study published Monday in the journal Current Biology, Kobe University ecologist Shinji Sugiura reveals more about the evolution of escape behavior in prey animals, most notably the aquatic beetle.
[...] When the Pelophylax nigromaculatus frog gulps the beetle, it can survive by swimming through the frog's digestive tract to later be pooped out intact and alive. Previously, it was suspected frogs spit out beetles that moved so erratically.
Sugiura revealed that 93 percent of the beetles fed to a frog during the study escaped the frog's "vent" (anus) within four hours, "frequently entangled in fecal pellets." The quickest beetle escape was an impressive six minutes.
Because the aquatic beetle has evolved to become a better swimmer by kicking its legs and can breathe underwater by trapping a small pocket of air under its wing covers, the beetle may have also evolved to survive inside a frog's intestines long enough to escape through its captor's tush.
A short video is available on Twitter and YouTube.
Journal Reference:
Shinji Sugiura. Active escape of prey from predator vent via the digestive tract, Current Biology (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.06.026)
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