Clearly, I Can See You’ve Got Guts Meet the glassfrog, a strange South American amphibian with a nearly transparent underbelly. The evolutionary significance of the clear abdomen is unknown, as light can be harmful to organ tissues (although the frogs get around that with a cool adaptation).  Robert Gonzalez has an interview with a glassfrog researcher at io9 highlighting their odd biological adaptations. I suppose the clear belly could be a survival technique to avoid being cut open by high school biology students?
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Clearly, I Can See You’ve Got Guts

Meet the glassfrog, a strange South American amphibian with a nearly transparent underbelly. The evolutionary significance of the clear abdomen is unknown, as light can be harmful to organ tissues (although the frogs get around that with a cool adaptation). 

Robert Gonzalez has an interview with a glassfrog researcher at io9 highlighting their odd biological adaptations. I suppose the clear belly could be a survival technique to avoid being cut open by high school biology students?

Source: io9.com

No, wait, THIS is the world’s smallest frog Seems like a competitive time to be a small-frog researcher. Can’t even go a month without someone taking your title from you. In December of 2011, Fred Kraus from the Bishop Museum in Hawaii announced that he had discovered the world’s smallest frogs. The two coin-sized species were just 8.1 to 9.3 millimetres long. But these miniscule amphibians now share a different record – they were the world’s smallest frogs for the shortest amount of time. Less than a month after Kraus’s announcement, Eric Rittmeyer and Christopher Austin from Louisiana University have found an even smaller frog, just 7 to 8 millimetres long. It’s dwarfed by a dime. It’s not just the world’s smallest frog, but the world’s smallest back-boned animal. And you won’t believe how hard they are to find. The team had to trace their cricket-like calls and then just hope for the best: “After several failed attempts to find it, we ended up just scooping up a big handful of leaf litter where the call was coming from and putting it all in a clear plastic bag. We went through that bag leaf by leaf until we discovered the incredibly small frog making the call.” Anyone else picturing Rick Moranis from Honey, I Shrunk The Kids? (via Not Exactly Rocket Science)
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No, wait, THIS is the world’s smallest frog

Seems like a competitive time to be a small-frog researcher. Can’t even go a month without someone taking your title from you.

In December of 2011, Fred Kraus from the Bishop Museum in Hawaii announced that he had discovered the world’s smallest frogs. The two coin-sized species were just 8.1 to 9.3 millimetres long. But these miniscule amphibians now share a different record – they were the world’s smallest frogs for the shortest amount of time.

Less than a month after Kraus’s announcement, Eric Rittmeyer and Christopher Austin from Louisiana University have found an even smaller frog, just 7 to 8 millimetres long. It’s dwarfed by a dime. It’s not just the world’s smallest frog, but the world’s smallest back-boned animal.

And you won’t believe how hard they are to find. The team had to trace their cricket-like calls and then just hope for the best:

“After several failed attempts to find it, we ended up just scooping up a big handful of leaf litter where the call was coming from and putting it all in a clear plastic bag. We went through that bag leaf by leaf until we discovered the incredibly small frog making the call.”

Anyone else picturing Rick Moranis from Honey, I Shrunk The Kids?

(via Not Exactly Rocket Science)

Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com