animalog
(http://blog.hellokitty.com/marvinm)
Interesting animal tidbits

Archive for September, 2007

See-through frogs

Friday, September 28th, 2007

(Photos from AFP/HO/File - Thu Sep 27, 2:54 PM ET)

“TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing see-through frogs, letting them observe organs, blood vessels and eggs under the skin without performing dissections.

“You can see through the skin how organs grow, how cancer starts and develops,” said the lead researcher Masayuki Sumida, professor at the Institute for Amphibian Biology of state-run Hiroshima University.

“You can watch organs of the same frog over its entire life as you don’t have to dissect it. The researcher can also observe how toxins affect bones, livers and other organs at lower costs,” he told AFP.”

The researchers produced the creature from rare mutants of the Japanese brown frog, or Rena japonica, whose backs are usually ochre or brown.

Such frogs could theoretically exist in the wild but it is “virtually impossible” they would naturally inherit so many recessive genes, Sumida said.

From yahoo news.

I hope none of these genetically modified froggies escape the labs. It’s stated in the article that the offspring of these transparent frogs are also transparent but their grandfroglets die soon after birth.

If cows could read

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

I found this very interesting sign in an entry from Virtualrain.

cow sign

Maybe I can put up a similar one at home so that other dogs won’t …do their business on our lawn. :)