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A transparent frog hides its red blood cells while sleeping : NPR


A group of glass frogs sleep upside down together on a leaf for camouflage.

Jesse Delia


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Jesse Delia


A group of glass frogs sleep upside down together on a leaf for camouflage.

Jesse Delia

Jesse Delia says it happened in Panama. A few years ago, he was completing his field work – a research project examining parental behavior towards a type of glass frog. He brought some of these half-dollar transparent frogs to the lab for pictures.

It led to an interesting discovery.

Delia told NPR: “I wanted to take some pictures of the beautiful glass frog belly. He placed them in a Petri dish and saw each frog’s circulatory system through its translucent skin – “red with red blood cells”.

But when he returned later, the frogs were asleep and the blood “was gone”.

It was as if the arteries and veins had just melted. Delia, now a biologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, recalls: “I thought it was crazy.

He took a video of the glass frog’s pumping heart and sent it to his longtime collaborator, Carlos Taboada, a biologist at Duke University.

“It’s colorless,” said Taboada. Not even the characteristic red streak of a vase in the frog’s belly is not visible. “It’s crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Both Delia and Taboada wanted to know – where did all the frog’s red blood go?

In a new sheet of paper in the magazine ScienceTaboada, Delia and their colleagues offer the answer: “They hide most of the red blood cells in the liver,” explains Delia.

The same glass frog was photographed asleep (left) and active (right), showing differences in red blood cell circulation.

Jesse Delia


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Jesse Delia


The same glass frog was photographed during sleep (left) and in activity (right), showing differences in red blood cell circulation.

Jesse Delia

During the day, when glass frogs sleep on green leaves, they are very vulnerable to predators, so they camouflage by becoming super transparent. (Their livers, among other organs, are covered with highly reflective white crystals.) Because their red blood cells are transporting very little oxygen, Delia said the frogs have may have “some alternative processes that allow them to keep their cells alive and transparent.” Then, at night, when the frogs become active, “feeding and mating, doing their usual business,” the vitreous amphibians release their red blood cells. they return to circulation.

Taboada said the frogs “pack about 90% of their red blood cells in a really small volume. Normally, those conditions can cause some sort of clotting disorder.” The researchers say that knowing how glass frogs avoid the clotting cascade could pave the way for new anticoagulant drugs for humans.

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