Our beloved wildlife ambassador has been creating lifelong connections with nature for generations. Donate Take Action. Garden Habitats Wildlife Facts. David Mizejewski January 5, Written by David Mizejewski. Recent Popular. Conservation , People and Wildlife. Conservation , Get Outside , People and Wildlife. Conservation , Get Outside. Conservation , Wildlife Facts. Students and Nature , Wildlife Facts. Instead, they get all the moisture they need from the seeds that they eat.
These critters also have incredible hearing and can jump up to nine feet, which helps them avoid predators. Source: Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Five families of notothenioid fish make their own "antifreeze" proteins to survive in the frigid Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica.
The proteins bind to ice crystals in their blood, preventing the fish from freezing. Source: National Science Foundation. Five families of notothenioid fish make their own antifreeze proteins to survive in the frigid Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica. The African bullfrog lives in the savanna of Africa, where it gets very hot and dry. When a frog is out of the water, mucus on its skin helps it breathe by dissolving oxygen from the air.
So, in order to prevent its skin from drying out in the hot African climate, the African bullfrog buries itself 6 to 8 inches underground. It then creates a mucus membrane, which hardens into a cocoon. The frog can stay in this cocoon for up to 7 years while it waits for rain.
When rain does arrive, the moisture softens the mucus sac, waking the frog, and signaling the start of the rainy season — the time when the frog breeds and when it is the most active. Source: The Amphibian. Cuttlefish have the amazing ability to change their color and texture in order to blend into their surroundings. They can detect how much light is being absorbed into the environment, then use that information to mimic it with their own pigments. They have 3 skin layers yellow, red, and brown , which can be stretched in different ways to make unique colors and patterns.
Their skin also has papillae, which let cuttlefish appear rigid, like coral. Together, these features allow cuttlefish to escape predators, as well as sneak up on unsuspecting prey. Source: UWLax. Higher order behaviors, such as mating drive and courting behavior, are not restored until at least several days later Costanzo et al.
Dissecting a frozen wood frog reveals that much of the ice is sequestered within the lymph system and in the coelom, where it may form without damaging delicate tissues and organs Lee et al. Freeze tolerance is also promoted by the rapid synthesis of glucose from liver glycogen and the distribution of this cryoprotective agent to cells throughout the body. The accumulated glucose apparently enhances the survival of cells, tissues, and organs because experimentally administering additional glucose to the frog increases its tolerance to freezing Costanzo et al.
One of the primary functions of glucose is to raise the osmotic pressure of the body fluids, which in turn reduces the amount of ice that forms at any given temperature. Glucose transported into cells acts as an osmolyte, decreasing the degree of cell shrinkage during freezing, and also serves as a fermentable fuel that can be metabolized in the absence of oxygen. The wood frog also uses urea as a cryoprotectant. Unlike glucose, urea is accumulated during autumn and early winter, and is already localized within cells when freezing begins.
Some evidence suggests that urea is more efficacious than glucose in preventing cryoinjury Costanzo and Lee Aquaporins AQPs and facilitative urea transporters UTs are two transporter proteins that have been implicated in a wide range of physiological roles in various organisms.
Recently, these proteins have been found in a variety of anurans; however, their physiological significance is not yet fully understood. In order to elucidate the importance of AQPs and UTs in osmolyte balance in hibernating frogs, we are examining expression of these proteins in frogs with varying degrees of terrestrialism. In addition we are measuring seasonal variations in expression, as well as changes in expression levels in response to winter-related stresses, in the wood frog.
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