Slanted Science

Have you ever had a splinter?

Of course you have. We all have. Normally works its way back out within a day or two, right? Well, imagine if instead of slipping out quietly the way it came in, that little wood chip worked its way into your body – through all the muscle, fat, and past the bones – and exited through your urethra.

Kermit won’t be smiling for long.

This all began back in 2003, when Christopher Tracy and colleagues from Charles Darwin University in Australia began tagging local frogs with microchips. Their aim was to find out how the critters regulated their body temperature.

When the boffins returned to collect their data, they noticed something strange: microchips lying around, with no indication that their previous owners had been eaten (a common occurrence when tagging small animals). As scientists will, they got to wondering what was happening to the frogs…or the microchips.

Well, when they brought a load of the tagged frogs back to their lab, they found that many of the chips were not within the body cavity (where they’d been implanted) but in the bladder. As Tracy said:

That’s when we started thinking about trying to pin down exactly what was going on.

The scientists began keeping frogs in their lab, and implanting beads into the beasts’ abdomens. By 3 weeks after insertion, the floor of the frogs’ cage was littered with beads. Cane toads kept alongside the frogs were slower to give up their treasure, but when killed and dissected it became clear what was happening: theirs were in the process of being enveloped into their bladders.

Other scientists have previously shown implanted objects being expelled by the bowels, but this is the first example of an animal using the urethra. Proof, perhaps, that frogs are stupid, stupid creatures.

Don’t Hold Your Breath, But This May Lead To: an end to our hobby of studding large, pendulous earrings into neighborhood frogs just so we could take hilarious photos. Sorry, guys: if only we’d realized what happened after we left you…