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17 comments to "The frog with no lungs"
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Andrew32
April 9th, 2008 at
7:48 pm
“just one other specimen had been collected since then and neither had been dissected.”
soo…. are you sure they have no lungs?
lol, interesting concept though.
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Chris
April 9th, 2008 at
8:05 pm
Are they good to eat?
(Frog dissection in biology class : such good memories
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NeuroGirl
April 9th, 2008 at
8:36 pm
Good stuff. I’d like to see pictures from the dissection, but it doesn’t look like they’re available
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bean
April 9th, 2008 at
9:44 pm
The Latin name reminds me of Barbarella, but I’m assuming that’s sheer coincidence.
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Thomas
April 9th, 2008 at
10:14 pm
@ andrew — I’m pretty sure if you’ve dissected one, you’ve dissected them all. For a species to be discovered to have no lungs today, doesn’t mean that they just got that way yesterday.
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the robot child
April 9th, 2008 at
10:39 pm
All frogs breath through both lungs and skin so it’s interesting to see this lesser evolved species.
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Stella
April 9th, 2008 at
10:50 pm
My god!!! I finally understand why I flunked bio so many years ago. The from i dissected was a freak and had no lungs.
Stella
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NeuroGirl
April 9th, 2008 at
10:58 pm
@ the robot child: I wouldn’t necessarily say that they are “less” evolved. Their evolution shows unique physiological adaptations to their very specific environment. People generally think of pool ventilation, lung breathing, as being a marker of higher evolution, but it’s not actually the most efficient method of respiration.
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the robot child
April 9th, 2008 at
11:13 pm
@NeuroGirl: Point taken but as soon as they’re removed from a damp environment it would pretty much be the end for this Boreno frog would it not?
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Thespian24601
April 10th, 2008 at
12:59 am
My science teacher would be so happy to see this news. He’s obsessed with conservation, and every time we go camping, he makes us attempt to identify animals based on their call.
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bean
April 10th, 2008 at
6:11 am
Heh. Do you go “camping” with your science teacher a lot?
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su.wei
April 10th, 2008 at
7:11 am
crazy! ive heard of this in smaller animals. but i know that the ratio of surface area to total body is a limiting factor. i wonder if it’s an issue for these frogs. and if so, how they compensate for it.
oOoOooo o_0 -
NeuroGirl
April 10th, 2008 at
8:59 am
@the robot child: Yes, but not necessarily because of the most obvious seeming answer. While cold water has a higher dissolved oxygen content than warm water, both are still markedly lower than the oxygen content of air. Obviously, the frog has found ways to increase his rate of oxygen uptake (increased surface-to-volume ratio, thinner diffusion barrier, decreased blood flow rate, more capillaries, etc). If you’ve ever pithed a frog, you know that they live for hours in dry environments, even after their lungs have been disabled. The problem with removing the frog from the damp environment is that the skin is not exclusively a respiration organ. In frogs, water contact is used to maintain ionic concentrations and the resulting gradients, remove metabolic waste products from the body, and perform a variety of other functions. Not that anybody here really cares that much about cutaneous respiration…
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someguy
April 10th, 2008 at
11:25 am
What evidence is there that there was a “loss” of the lungs. Who says they ever had lungs?
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CheeseDuck
April 10th, 2008 at
2:29 pm
Is it like an insect?
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Alannah
April 11th, 2008 at
1:05 am
I thought all frogs breathed through the skin. I thought that was why they were such good bioindicators.
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Submit Comment
April 13th, 2008 at
12:30 pm
This is truly amazing. If we could use this frog. To learn to adapt. We could live on the moon! Or better yet. In the moon!
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