What is a Wood Frog? And Why Are They (Literally) Cool? – Frog Blog
This guy is what’s commonly known as the wood frog (Lithobates sylvaticus and Rana sylvatica). They’re so cool they get two scientific names. They look like any other North American frog you’d see in a swamp, but don’t let their looks fool you, they can do something that most animals can’t.
They’re largely spread across the Norther part of North America, like Canada and Alaska. It gets very cold up there, by now you might be wondering how they survive this… The way they do it is extreme to say the least.
So, how does this little frog live through a bitter Canadian winter? Well, they FREEZE themselves, their living tissue freezes. They stop breathing, their heart stops beating, and a majority of their blood freezes. However, they still survive through this, and can remain in this state for up to eight months.
“Wood frogs have evolved ways to freeze solid for up to eight months each year. They’ve accomplished what would seem to be a biological miracle.”
National Park Service
Freezing live tissues can be dangerous, even fatal for most living things, as ice formation can rupture cells and change their shape. The wood frog has developed a way to prevent this from happening. They do this by using urea and glucose as cryoprotectants. Typically urea would be excreted as the main waste product in urine, I guess they have some of the world’s strongest bladders, and are great at reusing.
Did anyone ask him if he’s okay?
Wood frogs aren’t just cool because they freeze, they’re also a possible key to understanding blood sugar in diabetic humans. When in hibernation, they can withstand blood sugar levels 100 times higher than a healthy average without suffering any damage. Humans can only withstand about 2 to 10 times the amount of their normal blood sugar level before developing diabetes. They can even help us learn how to store organs for transplant, keep them frozen, and be able to thaw them with no tissue damage. Not only can wood frogs help with that, but understanding how they are able to halt their blood flow, then restart it could play a critical role in helping people who have had their blood flow temporarily halted by things such as heart attacks.
Cryogenics for preserving humans seems like a work of sci-fi, and is almost impossible, but these frogs do it every year. They’re really cool, because they’re really cool. Continuing to study the ways these frogs work their little miracles can help save human lives in the future.
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