Shape-Shifting frogs
April 1, 2015
The skin of a newly discovered frog species transitions from spiny to smooth in a matter of minutes depending on its background.
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Transcript
(Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society)
BOB HIRSHON (host):
Shape-shifting frogs. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
On the western slope of the Andes mountains, a frog with a remarkable superpower eluded discovery until recently. Case Western Reserve University amphibian ecologists Katherine and Tim Krynak first saw the frog on a mossy leaf.
KATHERINE KRYNAK (Case Western Reserve University):
We called it the punk rocker frog because of all of its little spines all over its skin.
HIRSHON:
It was three years later before they encountered a second one. They transported it in a cup.
KRYNAK:
And we took the frog out of the cup and we saw that its spines were gone, and I honestly thought that I had picked up the wrong frog. But I put some moss in the cup and the frog’s spines came back, and that was just incredibly shocking to see because vertebrates aren’t known to do that.
HIRSHON:
The researchers suspect the frog’s shape-shifting abilities may serve as a form of camouflage. I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.
