I get to dissect a frog in my biology class! Yay! For being such a stereotypical dissection animal, frogs can be pretty strange.
1. Frogs can breathe underground.
When frogs hibernate, they dig little trenches in moist soil and literally bury themselves alive. But they can still breathe fine. Frogs have tiny blood vessels near the surface of their skin, and oxygen from soil can diffuse directly into their vessels. The same deal applies when they’re underwater.
2. Frogs swallow with their eyeballs.
They basically have the most useless teeth in existence. Frogs only have a few pathetic teeth on their top jaws that serve to hold prey down – not like the roof of their mouths couldn’t do that alone. But then, their massive eyeballs just pop out of their sockets and shove the food down into their throats. Wouldn’t they get bug remnants in their pupils though?
3. Frogs shed regularly. Weekly, in fact. Then they eat it. People who bite their nails are excused.
Other miscellaneous facts:
4. The female Surinam toad has some disturbing ways of taking care of her children. All the eggs that she lays are distributed over her back, and her skin grows over them in a honeycomb structure. And once they’re fully developed, all of those little cretins will rip through her back like the creature who popped out of that man’s stomach in Aliens. So nasty. No pictures, because they will scar you for life.
5. Male frogs have weird nurturing habits too. Darwin’s frog swallows his hatched tadpoles, and they grow in his vocal sac for 60 days. Then he barfs up all his fully grown children.
6. The red-eyed tree frog is pretty creative with its care giving as well. The females lay their eggs on the underside of leaves that hang over water. Once they hatch, they just plop right in.
7. The glass frog is just as clear as its name suggests. They’re translucent, but they’re abdomens are totally see through. You can take a peak at all its internal organs and everything! Too bad they’re endangered. They would have been pretty useful for my bio class.
