When a certain kind of water beetle finds itself gulped down by a frog, it runs for its life. Yes, the insect—scientific name R. attenuata—scrambles through the frog’s intestine in a mad dash to the exit—the frog’s anus. Enjoy the video above! Kobe University ecologist Shinji Sugiura studied this curious process and timed the escape. From Wired:
Writing today in the journal Current Biology, Kobe University ecologist Shinji Sugiura describes how the beetle, locked behind the frog’s jaws, turns around and scrambles through its digestive tract. In carefully designed lab experiments, Sugiura found that 93 percent of the beetles he fed to the frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus escaped the predator’s “vent”—aka anus—within four hours, “frequently entangled in fecal pellets,” he writes. The quickest run from mouth to anus was just six minutes. The beetles then went about their day as if they hadn’t just spelunked through a digestive system, and even swam effectively.
“Further experiments are needed to investigate how to stimulate the frogs to defecate,” Sugiura adds. “However, I speculate that R. attenuata use legs and the body to stimulate the frog’s hind gut.”
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