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Imagine yourself as an insect, a water beetle to be exact, swimming around searching for food when all of a sudden, a giant frog swallows you whole! What would you do then?
For Regimbartia attenuata, the only option besides accepting your fate and dissolving quietly is to search for the rear-end exit. Shinji Sugiura, an ecologist at Japan's Kobe University, discovered that these amazing beetles actively escape death by swimming through a predator's digestive tract and exiting from its butt, intact with no observable damage.
Regimbartia attenuata escaping from the vents of Pelophylax nigromaculatus and Hyla japonica (4× speed). Video credit to Current Biology
While rare, the phenomenon is not unheard of as certain snail species are known to seal their shells shut and await excretion to survive being eaten by birds or fish. However, what makes this particular research fascinating is that the prey (water beetle) is actively escaping the predator (frog) rather than passively waiting for the digestion process to be complete.
Hypothetical escape route of Regimbartia attenuata through the frog digestive system. Photo credit to Kobe University.
For further reading, you can click on the following link for the research article published in Current Biology on August 3, 2020.
In 2019, wildlife researcher Andrea Malek discovered evidence that the critically endangered American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) may have successfully bred itself in the wild, providing a future where these elusive beetles may once again become a part of the native American ecosystem.
An American burying beetle (N. americanus). Critically endangered though the possibility of species re-establishment now seems brighter. Photo credit to The Columbus Dispatch.
Once common throughout the United States and Canada, it is believed that N. americanus dwindled in population due loss of appropriately sized food sources, light pollution, and competition from larger scavengers among other things.
A pair of mating beetles are about to be placed in their makeshift home where they will feed, mate, and produce new offspring, all on top of a warm cozy carcass. Photo credit to the Columbus Dispatch.
To re-establish the American burying beetle population, breeding programs at The Wilds in Muskingum County, Ohio were initiated with new populations released every summer. However, none seem to have survived the winter period, until now.
Click on the link above to read more about these fantastic beetles and the breeding program maintained by The Wilds and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife division.