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Beetles eaten alive escape from frog's butt!


MickinMD

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Scientists have for the first time seen prey survive getting eaten by actively making their way through a predator's entire digestive tract and escaping out the other end.

In lab experiments, the adult frogs, which can reach nearly 3 inches long, could easily gulp down the roughly 0.15-inch beetles. Surprisingly, about 93% of the beetles were excreted alive and active within four hours of getting swallowed. Similar results were seen when four other frog species swallowed these beetles -- the fastest exit Sugiura saw took place six minutes after a beetle was gobbled up.

R. attenuata's relatively quick escape led Sugiura to suspect the beetle had some way to promote excretion and actively flee.

The researcher often saw the frogs' excrement contained beetle legs. When he stuck the beetles' own legs to their bodies using wax before feeding them to frogs, they all died in the frogs. This leads him to suspect the insects use their legs to stimulate the frogs' digestive tracts, urging them to poop.

Rest of story here: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/beetles-eaten-alive-observed-escaping-frogs-end/story?id=72244006

beetle-ht-jt-200807_1596829264215_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg

 

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