Surprisingly, the world’s only lungless frog species does possess lungs

The tiny frog from Borneo was thought to be the only known species of frog without lungs, but it turns out it does.

The team led in 2008 is david bickford The National University of Singapore dissected 11 specimens of the rare Bornean flat-headed frog (Barbula kalimantanensis). when they were surprised, No frog lungs were found.“As soon as I opened it, Barbulait was something odd,” Bickford says.

These frogs are completely aquatic and live in cold, fast-flowing rivers. So after conducting several tests, researchers deduced that the lack of lungs was an adaptation to their habitat. Normally, cutaneous respiration does not provide enough oxygen for amphibians to lack lungs, but the only species known to lack lungs are the caecilian wasp and a few salamanders, and this species is limited to island oxygen. It was thought to be the first frog to sustain life. A rich river. Large, air-filled lungs may also increase the frog's buoyancy and make it more susceptible to strong currents.

But now, david blackburn Researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History reexamined two of Bickford's specimens.they ran them High resolution micro CT scanner And I saw a respiratory system with small, thin lungs hiding in plain sight.

“Right away, we both said, why does he have a hole under his mouth? It's not supposed to have that,” Blackburn says. He found the glottis, where the mouth and lungs connect.

Bickford says he's “really pleased” that science has been able to find out more about this rare and elusive species. He adds that these lungs are “so tiny” relative to the size of the frog that they're still in doubt: Barbula It relies heavily on oxygen taken in through the skin.

“While we can't really rule out that the shrunken lungs may have some function, we're also skeptical,” he says.

This development was not entirely unexpected, according to leif brown from the University of Kansas was not involved in the study. Fifteen years later, Blackburn had better technology and a more extensive collection of frogs to compare against. Professor Brown further researched to better understand whether all frogs that have evolved to live in rivers have atrophied lungs, and whether other frogs have potentially lost the ability to breathe with their lungs. He says many species need to be studied.