When the pumpkin frog jumps into the air, anything seems possible. A small frog, the size and color of a honeybee CloudberryHe had no problem launching himself off the ground. But when the pumpkin frog started to rise, something went wrong.
The frog’s body began to twist, and its limbs were flattened like a starfish. Then he fell, rolling mercilessly until he landed on his butt or head and accidentally stopped the sprocket or stern.
“Some guys just spin,” Andre Confetti, a graduate student at Brazil’s Paraná Federal University, pretends by moving his finger in the air over a Zoom call. “Some men do this Confetti added, wagging his fingers in a circle like a waterwheel.
“Frogs fly in the air, in space,” said Amber Singh, soon to be a master’s student at San Jose State University.
Pumpkin frogs, which are frogs but not frogs, are so bad at landing with their jumps that their incompetence has been the subject of scientific research. A team of researchers from the US and Brazil that includes Confetti and Singh say they have an answer: Tiny curls are so small that the fluid-filled spaces in their inner ears that control their balance function are rather ineffective, eliminating the little ring of daredevils. During the crash landing.
It paper Affirms that many species of pumpkin frogs belonging to the genus of tadpoles are called humerusPresenting “a very unusual jump with uncontrolled landing behavior,” said Tess Kondis, a researcher at Carleton University in Canada who was not involved in the study.
Or, as Confetti puts it, “They’re not doing anything right.”
It’s not easy being a bee-sized vertebrate. Pumpkin braids make evolutionary trade-offs as small as that, like reducing the number of digits on their legs from five to three. Frogs, known for their humidity, dry faster when they are young, said Rick Isner, a functional morphologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and author of the research paper. But sometimes those small treats come in handy: “For a can of pumpkin, ants are a very big meal,” says Eisner.
frog evolve The ability to jump before they develop the ability to land, which means that not all frogs have mastered the second part of the process. Eisner previously conducted research on a group of similar clumsy-tailed frogs, which jumped quite reasonablely but landed on full-face transplants.
When Marcio Bay, a researcher at the Federal University of Parana in Brazil, and the author of the paper discovered Eisner’s research on floundering frogs, he emailed Eisner about pumpkin scales. Pie Lab members have started collecting tadpoles and other miniature frogs from the wild to watch them jump and (try to) land.
Pumpkin frogs lead an elusive life. These frogs live and feed under fallen leaves in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, which are twice their size, making them very difficult to study. “They are very small and closed creatures,” Condez said. “Most of our knowledge of their behavior comes from rare observations in the field.”
Finding a frog the size of an insect in Brazil is a daunting task. Although pumpkin frogs are as bright as shito, the leaf litter is filled with neon mushrooms and other orange-colored life. “It’s very difficult to catch under leaf litter,” says Confetti. “Especially for me, because I am color blind.”
Instead, the researchers had to listen to the calls of the frogs, which sounded like crickets. Back in Pie’s lab, the researchers placed each frog in a mirror surrounded by several barriers and filmed their jumping attempt. (Some have to be pushed with a gentle flick of their little ass.)
When Eisner saw the tape, he burst out laughing. Then immediately consume the problem at hand. The frogs are very far from the tailed frogs bouncing off the frog family tree, meaning that the problem is not with the ancestors. So why can’t they land in one jump? “It wasn’t an ‘Eureka’ moment,” said Eisner. “It was the, ‘What’s going on here?’ moment.”
associated with him: Rick IsnerEisner went on to read a large number of scientific papers, including one Previous experience The researchers disrupted the cane frog’s vestibular system, which is usually an excellent hopper. Hacked frogs exhibit very similar landing problems to squash frogs.
Eisner wondered if the frog problem had reached the scale. Vertebrate organisms are able to balance and adapt in the world because of our vestibular system: a complex system of fluid-filled spaces and canals in our inner ear. Moving our heads causes fluid, called endolymph, to generate forces that bend sensory hair cells and signals from our central nervous system to control our posture and movement. Although vertebrate body sizes vary widely, the size of these canals remains fairly constant. “Between frogs and humans or whales, they don’t change as much as you’d expect,” Eisner said.
The researchers suspect that the frogs’ smaller bodies and smaller skulls might limit the size of the semicircular canals in their inner ears and prevent the fluid within them from flowing freely. “When you take a tube and make it smaller and smaller and smaller, the resistance to fluid flow increases,” says Eisner.
David Blackburn, curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, and Edward Stanley, a museum associate scientist, conducted a cross-sectional survey of museum specimens of 147 frog species, including the largest ( goliath frog), the smallest frog (“there are two frog species on the run for the smallest frog,” Stanley said), and the pumpkin frog. The frogs were kept in “standard frog position, a bit stiff and not very flexible,” as Stanley explains. He packed the preserved frogs in a Ziploc bag filled with nuts and wiped them with his million-dollar machine. Singh then provided a 3D model of the frog’s semicircular canal from a CT scan.
The resulting measurements reveal a semicircular channel of humerus Mini frog in Bidofrin They are the smallest of the adult vertebrates, resulting in loss of motor control and disorganized landing.
Researchers have considered other possible explanations. Maybe the pumpkin-braided three-toed leg slipped during the initial jump? Or maybe the drooping leaves are meant to resemble fallen leaves, to trick predators into looking for treats? The videos didn’t show much slipping as the frogs took off, the researchers wrote, and the tiny braids didn’t last long enough to resemble leaves.
The CT scan also hinted that the plexus may have developed some internal bone guard to make it more secure in the event of a crash. “They appear to be wearing backpacks that are all bones,” Stanley said, referring to the pumpkin frog species. Brachycephalus ephippium. However, pumpkin frogs tend to dribble more than jump. Eisner suggested that jumping was most likely an escape response, a way to quickly get out of a dangerous situation. There is a saying that bruises are better than eaten. Plus, “You don’t have to worry about breaking a bone if you’re the size of a house fly,” adds Eisner.
Pumpkin braids live in Brazil atlantic forest, It is one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet. “Every mountain in southern Brazil has the potential to have a new kind humerusSweet words. “We don’t know how much” humerus We have it in our backyard.”
But 85 percent of the area has been deforested, and what remains is highly fragmented. “It makes me wonder how many of these species we ever knew, because they’ve disappeared,” Eisner said.
Maybe the takeaway from Toad Pumpkin isn’t all that needs fixing. Just because you’re bad at something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, especially if you have a secret bone backpack and toxic poison glands. Even if a pumpkin frog’s small jump is equivalent to a locomotive drawing horseThis doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t walk or jump or stumble as he pleases in the damp leaf litter of a vanishing forest. Each species should have the right to fail spectacularly, but in its own way.
associated with him: Rick Isner–
