The astonishing vanishing act of the glassfrog, revealed

[Judi Lynn]

December 26, 202212:57 PM ET

ARI DANIEL



A group of glassfrogs sleeping together upside down on a leaf, showing their camouflage.
Jesse Delia


Jesse Delia says it happened in Panama. A few years back, he was finishing up his field work — a research project examining the parental behavior of a type of glassfrog. He brought a handful of these transparent, half dollar-sized frogs to the lab for a photo shoot.

It led to an exciting discovery.

"I wanted to get some photos of a pretty glassfrog belly," Delia tells NPR. 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 came back later, the frogs were sleeping and the blood "was gone."

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

. . .



The same glassfrog photographed during sleep (left) and while active (right), showing the difference in red blood cell circulation.
Jesse Delia

More:
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/26/1145523973/glassfrog-hides-its-blood-glass-frogs

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Nature never ceases to amaze. . . . nt

[Baitball Blogger]

2. I saw a glass frog once in my childhood.

In Panama. You could see right through its belly. It was tiny, a perfect shade of light green where it had color, and no larger than a nickel.