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“Our study shows that being translucent does help glass frogs camouflage themselves from predators, but not necessarily in the way expected by comparison to fully transparent species,” said Barnett. Overall, 53 opaque and 24 translucent frogs were eaten during the experiment. The team found participants were quicker to spot the frog when it was fully opaque compared with frogs with a natural pattern of translucency.įinally, the team made 180 translucent and 180 opaque frogs out of gelatine and put them in vegetation in Ecuador, monitoring over the course of 72 hours whether the frogs were attacked by birds. Twenty people were each presented with 125 such images and asked to point out the frog as quickly as possible. The team then produced computer-generated images of glass frogs with different patterns of translucency against leafy backgrounds. “The camouflaging effect is interpreted in a similar manner between humans and the frogs’ natural predators,” said Barnett. The results were the same when they modelled how different species may see these frogs, including a snake, a bird and a human. “We found that the colour of the frogs’ bodies did not change much between backgrounds, but the legs did change significantly,” said Barnett, adding that the change was down to a shift in brightness, not hue. In the first, they photographed 55 glass frogs both on leaves and on a white background and then used computer models to compare the colour of the frog in each scenario. Writing in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Barnett and colleagues report how they carried out three experiments. “By having translucent legs and resting with the legs surrounding the body, the frog’s edge is transformed into a softer, less contrasting gradient from the leaf to the legs, and again from the legs to the body,” said Barnett, noting that this makes the frog’s outline less recognisable to predators. The team say that while the colour of the frog’s body changes little against dark or light foliage, the legs are more translucent and hence shift in brightness, helping the amphibians to blend in.
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“The frog is always green to generally match leaves, but leaves will differ in their brightness,” said Barnett.
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#Translucent skin cracked
“If predators cannot see straight though the frogs, why do glass frogs have transparent skin at all, and not the opaque camouflaged patterns of other tree frog species?” said Dr James Barnett, a postdoctoral researcher at McMaster University, Canada, who co-authored the study.īarnett and colleagues say they have cracked the conundrum. This has led to a question that has kept scientists on the hop. However, the frogs are not truly transparent but translucent, with the skin on their backs typically a vivid green and their intestines and heart visible through their underbelly.