Being eaten by a frog? Surprisingly not a problem.
There Are Two Ways Out of a Frog. This Beetle Chose the Back Door.
A researcher fed beetles to frogs. The encounter did not end as expected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/science/beetle-frog-poop.html?smid=tw-nytimesscience&smtyp=cur
Itโs a familiar story: Predator hunts prey. Predator catches prey. Predator gulps down prey.
Usually, thatโs it. But the water scavenger beetle Regimbartia attenuata says, โNot today.โ After getting swallowed by a frog, this plucky little insect can scuttle down the amphibianโs gut and force it to poop โ emerging slightly soiled, but very much alive.
The bugโs transit through the digestive tract can last as briefly as six minutes, a measly fraction of the two or more days it typically takes for a frog to fully digest and defecate its dinner, according to a study published Monday in
Current Biology.
โThis is a weirdly wonderful behavior that I hadnโt heard about before,โ said Carla Bardua, an evolutionary biologist at Londonโs Natural History Museum who wasnโt involved in the study. โThat a little beetle can actively swim through a digestive system is peculiar and amazing.โ
Shinji Sugiura, a biologist at Kobe University in Japan, has been cataloging the
strange shenanigans of
insects and their predators for years. Some bugs, for instance, goad toads into
puking them back up after theyโve been gobbled.
โInsect morphologies and behaviors always inspire me,โ Dr. Sugiura said in an email, adding that heโs particularly keen on defenses against predators that seem โunimaginable.โ
After noticing that Regimbartia beetles and frogs frequent the same paddy fields in Japan, Dr. Sugiura brought together one specimen of each in the lab, expecting the insect would be spit out. Instead, it rocketed out the other end of the digestive tract โ a fecal feat that Dr. Sugiura managed to capture on film.
Eager to test the behaviorโs limits, Dr. Sugiura repeated his experiments with five species of insect-munching frogs in the lab. A whopping 90 percent of the beetles they swallowed made it out the other end alive, all within six hours of being gulped down.
(Follow the link for the full article)