The wood frog (Lithobates sylvaticus) is a resilient creature. You can find it as far south as Alabama and as far north as Alaska and northern Canada. It’s the only frog that lives in the wild north of the Arctic Circle.
How does an amphibian survive the harsh winters of those frozen lands? It freezes. Scientists working in Alaska found that local wood frogs can freeze solid for up to 7 months. When the ice melts, the frogs thaw and, amazingly, are still alive! Deborah Netburn wrote about this phenomenon last year in the Los Angeles Times:
“On an organismal level they are essentially dead,” said Don Larson, a graduate student at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks who studies frogs. “The individual cells are still functioning, but they have no way to communicate with each other.”
Larson is one of several researchers who published their findings in the Journal of Experimental Biology. They found that the frogs produce a lot of glucose during the winter, which keeps their cells viable.
via Neatorama
(Photo: Michael Zahniser)
