A beetle’s Houdini act

When one animal eats another, it’s typically game over for the prey. But a plucky species of water beetle has developed a cunning survival strategy when swallowed whole by a frog: It finds its way through its host’s gut, forces the frog to poop, and safely makes its exit. In multiple lab tests to examine this unlikely escape act, researchers presented a Pelophylax nigromaculatus pond frog with a Regimbartia attenuata beetle, reports ScientificAmerican.com. The swallowed beetles re-emerged from the back end 93 percent of the time, typically making their getaway within four hours—though the fastest managed it in just six minutes. The beetles were “frequently entangled in fecal pellets,” says lead author Shinji Sugiura, from Kobe University in Japan, but they “recovered immediately” and survived for at least two weeks after excretion. The fact that frogs typically don’t defecate that soon after a meal suggests that R. attenuata has evolved to stimulate its host’s anus, or fecal vent, into opening.