Shinji Sugiura, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Agriculture, Kobe University, said that the mamega beetle (a type of beetle) that lives in paddy fields passes through the digestive tract alive even if it is preyed on by frogs, and the cloaca (hole in the butt). I found that I could escape safely from.
In recent years, after an attack from a predator, the behavior of living and escaping from the predator's body has been discovered.Such behavior may be exhaled through the mouth and escaped, or it may be excreted alive through the gastrointestinal tract and through the anus or cloaca.In particular, the latter needs to withstand a long time in the gastrointestinal tract until it is excreted.Therefore, it is advantageous to take an action to actively escape in the shortest possible time, but such an action has not been known.
Many frogs have no teeth and swallow prey insects and small animals.As a result of investigating escape and defense behavior by feeding various terrestrial and aquatic insects to frogs under the laboratory, 15 out of 14 (90% or more) of Mamegamushi are cloaca of frogs even if swallowed by Tonosama frog. Alive and escaped from the cavity, one individual died and was expelled.Similar behavior was seen with the other four species of frogs (Tokyo Daruma frog, Rana rugosa, Fejervarya frog, and Japanese tree frog).
In addition, the average time for the Tonosama frog to excrete undigested material was 24-148 hours for non-mamega beetles, 50 hours on average, and 0.1-3.5 hours for mamega beetles (live excretion), 1.6 hours on average.The cloaca of frogs is normally closed by the sphincter and cannot escape with the power of the frog.Therefore, it is possible that the frog is stimulated from the inside to promote defecation.Until now, no animal has been known to promote defecation of such predators and escape alive from the cloaca.
Paper information:[Current Biology] Active escape of prey from predator vent via the digestive tract
