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A beetle that heads for the ‘back door’ when eaten by a frog (2020)
- thaumasiotes 3y agoThis is why you chew your food.
- praptak 3y agoMost frogs don't have teeth though.
- tchaffee 3y agohttps://i.pinimg.com/736x/c0/64/72/c0647299ff0863268d4adafd9d7db370--funny-smiles-funny-frogs.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c0/64/72/c0647299ff0863268d4adafd9...
- bmitc 3y agoI get this is a joke, but just bouncing off: don't humans mainly need to chew food because we have a terrible design and evolution put our lifeline of air intake in a tiny hole behind a flap right where we swallow food in a small, relatively inflexible tube and location?
- thaumasiotes 3y agoNo. It's true that other animals don't have the difficulty with choking on food that we do. But it's not true that other animals don't chew their food. You chew your food to make it easier to digest and so that it will fit down your throat. And, if it's alive, so that it will be dead instead.
- bmitc 3y ago> But it's not true that other animals don't chew their food. I didn't say that.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoIf you claim that humans chew their food because their throats are uniquely vulnerable to choking, you have also claimed that animals without such awkward throats don't need to chew their food. Putting things another way, just a few minutes of observation are sufficient to demonstrate that running the air intake past the esophagus is so irrelevant to the purpose of chewing that the absence of that problem does not affect the behavior in any way.
- actionfromafar 3y agoIsn’t that logic in reverse?
- thaumasiotes 3y agoNo. The two claims are contrapositives of each other: 1. Chewing -> bad throat 2. Good throat -> no chewing
- actionfromafar 3y agoBad throat -> chewing required. Good throat -> chewing not required for that reason but possibly for other reason. Chewing -> bad throat possible, but not required. Not chewing -> bad throat badge not unlocked.
- bmitc 3y ago> If you claim that humans chew their food because their throats are uniquely vulnerable to choking, you have also claimed that animals without such awkward throats don't need to chew their food. No, I haven't. That quite simply does not follow, at all. There is to much variation in the definitions and permutations of chewing, throat design, air intake design, types of foods eaten, and digestive systems to make that leap.
- hutzlibu 3y agoCows and animals alike (ruminant) basically chew all day and they bring the food back from the stomach to chew it again. Otherwise they cannot get enough nutrients out of gras and co.
- Xylakant 3y agoQuite a few animals chew their food multiple times for more effective digestion - cows for example. Plant fibers are notoriously hard to break down. Horses don’t and if you compare the digestion results, you’ll see a significant difference between horse dung and cow dung.
- adrian_b 3y agoBesides the ruminants, there are also other animals, the best known being the rabbits, which are not able to reverse the direction of the food to bring it back from the stomach into the mouth, so after a one-way passage of the food through their bodies they must eat it again, to chew it for the second time.
- chongli 3y agoYeah. Horses are so inefficient at digestion that the largest breeds (such as Clydesdales) would starve to death in huge fields of grass. They can only survive by being fed copious amounts of grain such as oats.
- dev_tty01 3y agoHmm. Do you have a reference for that? From what I have read, Clydesdales are fine on good pasture (hay in the winter), but they won't be able to do much if any work if they don't get additional feed. They would also likely not be as muscled as a horse with supplemental feed. A clydesdale raised on pasture only might also end up smaller, but they won't starve to death, assuming it is quality pasture.
- chongli 3y agoI'm talking about a large breed raised on grain and then suddenly switched to pasture -- not one raised on pasture its whole life -- as you might see with a retired working animal. They may not literally starve to death, but they will lose a lot of muscle mass and may get sick and die from that, or may struggle to survive the winter.
- the_sleaze9 3y ago
- midoridensha 3y ago>And, if it's alive, so that it will be dead instead. For most animals, this is true I think. But frogs seem to be perfectly happy swallowing live prey whole. You can see videos of frogs eating live mice!
- donatzsky 3y agoNo. It's actually important for an effective digestion. Not just because smaller pieces are easier to break down, but because the enzymes in the saliva start the process.
- bmitc 3y agoDigestion is important but I think being able to breath is more important. Poor digestion won't kill you as readily as suffocation or pneumonia from aspiration. They, being protecting food from blocking or entering the trachea and digestion, both seem pretty important as part of the whole chewing system, so I don't think it's a plain "No". I should correct my original comment from mainly to one of the main reasons.
- rex_lupi 3y agoDo you know how snakes "eat"?
- saalweachter 3y agoChickens have no teeth, but they chew their food (the food is first stored in their crop, along with gravel, where it is "chewed" before passing to the stomach.)
- MayeulC 3y agoWell, sort of, it's the gizzard that "chews" it, not the crop.
- bmitc 3y agoWhat does that have to do with humans?
- lproven 3y agobreath /breθ/ -- noun: air that is drawn in and out. breathe /briːð/ -- verb: the act of inhaling and exhaling for the purposes of respiration. They are not the same word and they do not sound the same.
- krisoft 3y agoAbsolutely. But at least we (and all other animals with a secondary palate) can chew while breathing. I heard that before that has evolved it put a severe caloric disadvantage on the animals since one was limited in how much chewing can happen by the need to breath. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_palate#Evolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_palate#Evolution
- KineticLensman 3y ago> But at least we (and all other animals with a secondary palate) can chew while breathing Interestingly, sprint predators such as cheetahs have to pause to get their breath back after a fast chase before they can eat their prey. In contrast, raptors such as falcons can eat immediately after a kill because they don't get out of breath in the same way. The avian respiratory system is actually quite different to ours, with relatively rigid lungs, separate air sacs to pump the air, and a one-way flow through the lungs, in contrast to mammalian lungs where the air goes in and out through the same pipe, and the lungs act as bellows as well as gas transfer devices.
- mongol 3y agoI fail to see how we represent terrible design. Most animals our size need to chew food with their mouth, and of them I can't think of any more successful than us, evolutionary speaking.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- falcor84 3y agoThe fact that our species is successful doesn't mean that every mechanism in our bodies is good. There are a lot of "design decisions" which could have been improved if they had gone through a review, rather than evolution. One such example is the way our retinas are wired to the optic nerve on the inside of the eye, rather than behind, causing us to have a "blind spot" where the nerve fibres need to go back. In some other animals, particularly the octopus, the retina is wired the "right way", such that they don't have a blind spot. Same for the design of our pharynx, larynx and esophagus. As mentioned in sibling comments, other animals suffer from choking much less, as compared to humans, where we have ~5k deaths/year from choking just in the US [0]. [0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/527321/deaths-due-to-choking-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/527321/deaths-due-to-cho...
- mongol 3y agoNor does it mean it is terrible. That is the kind of exaggregation I reacted on.
- bmitc 3y agoI guess you feel it's an exaggeration, but how? We put physical filters in front of basically anything we build that takes in air for the exact reason of it's bad to take in anything other than air for systems that only expect air. Choking kills thousands of people every year and is the fourth leading cause in children under 5. According to this article (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35099619/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35099619/), aspirated pneumonia is even worse, especially for older people, who guess what, can't chew well. And it's all due to the (apparently not terrible) design.
- dev_tty01 3y agoI think we have to know the order in which these features occurred. As others pointed out, chewing has other benefits. Maybe evolution took advantage of chewing to change the air intake design for some other advantage.
- bmitc 3y agoI thought of this, as it could also be the other way around. As in, hey this food is already chewed because of the air intake design, resources can be allocated elsewhere instead of spending them on digesting. Or it developed completely differently I'm actually curious as to what the guesstimated order is.
- cityofdelusion 3y agoHumans don't need to chew their food at all. If there is enough moisture, you can swallow most foods whole in chunks. Chewing is part of the digestive process (especially for plant material) to increase the surface area of the food. Even carnivores with huge throats and few or no molars can be observed chewing certain foods.
- andrewstuart 3y agoA talent I have always personally wished to have, but never succeeded in.
- MidnightRider39 3y ago[flagged]
- krisoft 3y ago> Speak for yourself He very clearly did.
- mongol 3y agoHave you tried?
- drbig 3y ago> were able to make the trip in a minimum time of six minutes. (The longest journey took about four hours, per Wired.) Between 6 and 240 minutes... How come such a wild range? Some take time sightseeing?
- burnished 3y agoIf you get turned around and try to head in the wrong direction you just aren't going to make any headway.
- myspy 3y agoBecause when he's turning around, he's making his way to the head.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoIf you had ever watched the documentary, you'd know that Lemmiwinks must overcome many obstacles and trials to escape.
- passion__desire 3y agoThe Hero's Journey. Joseph Campbell must be proud.
- froggit 3y agoIf Lemmiwinks was one of these beetles he'd have simply turned around and gone out the same way he went in xD
- Obscurity4340 3y agoThe eventual Lemmiwinks/Wikileaks thing was freaking genius
- wanderingstan 3y agoI would imagine it also has something to do with their relative sizes, and how full the frogs digestive system was at the start.
- thecodeboy 3y agoI feel bad for the beetle in this experiment. It must have spent a lot of its energy reserve to emerge out of the frog, probably to have been swallowed again.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Natsu 3y agoWell the one where they immobilized the legs just got eaten, so... yeah. The photos of the escape make me imagine the world's strangest motivational "hang in there" type of poster.
- AdamN 3y ago"Never say Never!" "There is no try, only do"
- gcanyon 3y ago"There is no try, only doo doo"
- tanseydavid 3y agoI think they should rename the insect to the "Andy Dufresne Beetle" -- the escape totally reminds me of Shawshank Redemption.
- hhh 3y agoOne must imagine the beetle happy Duster — Me And The Birds starts playing
- hutzlibu 3y ago"probably to have been swallowed again" Likely not. Animal trials are usually one use, to get the best data. And the animals in use get usually killed afterwards anyway. If you like animals, you probably do not want to learn too many details about it all.
- mufty 3y agoThis is such an interesting read. I’m wondering if this behavior is only observed between this Japanese frog and beetle, or perhaps it’s spread throughout nature.
- Keysh 3y agoFrom the article "He found that the beetles had similarly high success rates with four other frog species.... "When swallowed, other similar water beetles were killed and digested by the frog...."
- thih9 3y ago> covered in feces, but otherwise active and seemingly healthy The accuracy and level of detail makes me speechless. Then again, I saw the title and continued reading, so I knew what I was getting into. At least I have more vocabulary for when my dog rolls in something on a walk.
- rob74 3y agoYes, "my dog is covered in feces" does sound more elegant than "my dog just rolled in sh*t" - but how you articulate it doesn't improve the situation if the dog in question is sitting next to you...
- VeninVidiaVicii 3y ago…but otherwise active and seemingly healthy! A hilarious non-sequitur for the dog scenario.
- m3047 3y agoOur feral cat only rolled in high quality horse shit. He was very particular, as well as proud of his smelliness.
- emiliobumachar 3y agoHow does it breathe in there?
- rob74 3y agoIt's a water beetle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_beetle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_beetle), that probably helps.
- jakzurr 3y agoI see a real benefit to the beetle, if it can get out. But I'm wondering, is there any benefit to the frog from consuming this type of "fiber"?
- bentobean 3y agoInteresting. Free colon cleanse. Now we just need to find the beetle species that can perform the same feat in humans.
- beeforpork 3y agoMaybe the same beetle would work. Has anyone tried?
- throwanem 3y agoA human has a much longer gut.
- chongli 3y agoSure though the deadliest part, the stomach, is not that long.
- throwanem 3y agoGranted, but I'm thinking more about how long the beetle can survive without access to air.
- UnFleshedOne 3y agoThat's an aquatic beetle, a lot of those store their own air supply under their wings...
- throwanem 3y ago
- SkipperCat 3y agoThis beats every post Ive seen on Reddit's r/prolifetip.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago"Well, you wouldn't shit me now, would you?" (Sorry, it's the oh-so-appropriate punch line from a joke in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971).)
- coryfklein 3y agoWhoever wrote this is genius, how many times in your career do you get the opportunity to write this stuff. So many amazing quotes in this article, I’m dying. 10/10 would read again.
- tchaffee 3y agohttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-beetle-gets-eaten-frog-it-forces-its-way-out-back-door-180975484/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-beetle-gets-e...
- beeforpork 3y agoOMG, this detail -- it itches already: > Sugiura suspects that the beetles also use their legs to stimulate the frog’s cloacal sphincter, causing it to defecate. However, he’ll need to run more tests to be sure...
- tosser0001 3y agoI like how the diagram is captioned "A hypothetical escape route ..." as if the frog's gut were a cave system with different potential passageways and not a single path out
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zabzonk 3y agodefinite Ig Nobel Prize candidate
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoInspiration for this ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-pDUO-epfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-pDUO-epfg
- tiarafawn 3y agoReminds me of the German poem "Storch und Schleiche" [1] (LLM translation): A stork once strolled by the pond's edge, where he spotted a blind slow-worm, a hedge. The stork exclaimed, "Oh, this is quite grand!" and devoured it, all, without a reprimand. The slow-worm lay in the stork's belly, and both found this situation rather smelly. The blind slow-worm then spoke with dismay, "Such horror!" and slipped through the back door away. The stork, vexed by this unhappy twist, couldn't believe he'd let the slow-worm persist. So, without hesitation or delay, he ate the slow-worm again the same way. He cleverly wedged the back door tight, so the blind slow-worm could not escape his sight. The stork called in, with a cunning tone: "Well, if you can, try escaping on your own!" The sly slow-worm found the front door clear, and promptly made his escape with no fear. But the stork, filled with anger and spite, ate the slow-worm once more, sealing his plight. In a crafty invention, the stork's mind did revel, he connected both doors to secure his prey well. Then, addressing the slow-worm inside without fail, "Now get ready for a round trip, without fail!" [1] https://www.schwaben-kultur.de/home/stat/larchiv/447.html https://www.schwaben-kultur.de/home/stat/larchiv/447.html
- ihaveajob 3y agoInspiration for The Human Centipede?
- dreamcompiler 3y agoZe Frank is probably working on his doc about this right now.
- redbell 3y agoSo, the whole journey of the beetle be like: f(x)=x
- dev_tty01 3y agoYou left off a term: F(x) = x + S
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoThis feels like a perfect metaphor for my career to date...
- jwcacces 3y agoThe beetle crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even imagine. Or maybe I just don't want to. The length of five football fields. Just shy of half a mile. I guess it comes down to a simple choice. Get busy living or get busy dying.
- chongli 3y agoThanks! This beetle reminded me of Andy Dufresne as well! What a champion of survival this little creature is!
- ncr100 3y agoThat person was also referenced in the videogame Trover Saves the Universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtiqS1l_SbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtiqS1l_SbM Very NSFW language. Hilarious, foul and disgusting coprophilia .. "back magic".
- waltwalther 3y agoImpossible not to read in Morgan Freeman's voice. This might be the best comment I have ever seen on HN. Thank you.
- warent 3y agoFor anyone wondering apparently this is a play on a quote from Shawshank Redemption, (I've never seen the movie!) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/characters/nm0000151 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/characters/nm0000151
- ManuelKiessling 3y agoDude put down whatever you are doing and watch that movie right now!
- hackernewds 3y agoWhy!
- LanceH 3y agoTopologically, the beetle was never inside the frog.
- qazpot 3y agoThe beetle fell into a hole and came out the otherside.
- LanceH 3y agoSame side. The frog can be modelled as a torus for purposes of this beetle's navigation.
- euroderf 3y agoWell then, we're all just talking donuts that absolutely ruin perfectly good food.
- makeset 3y agoSurely this is the humor behind the "spherical cow" [1] metaphor for scientific oversimplification. Obviously a real cow isn't a sphere. It's a torus. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
- Jenkins7654 3y agoThanks for sharing this.
- Jenkins7654 3y agoI tried..https://colasocialsecurity.info/ https://colasocialsecurity.info/
- Dowwie 3y agoWhen you're going through hell, keep going
- tamimio 3y agoWhat’s the point of escaping when you are going to be swallowed again? (I think that frog ate it after, but the video cut before that)
- hackernewds 3y agoFree waterslide
- i_k_k 3y ago“According to a Kobe University statement, this study marks the first time that researchers have witnessed prey quickly and actively escape the body of its predator after being eaten.” I present my favorite video of the rough-skinned newt “actively escaping” from a bullfrog’s body after being eaten: https://youtu.be/kvBi5Wv8-qg?t=99 https://youtu.be/kvBi5Wv8-qg?t=99
- tsavo 3y agoUnintentional spelunking by a beetle
- 1-6 3y agoIt makes me wonder what other living organisms are able to defeat the digestive tract and continue living once it is expelled out of the host. There has to be a name for this phenomenon.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago"grad school"