![]() ![]() "Ordinarily they're kept in the digestive tract," said Hofmann, of the University of California, San Diego, who wasn't part of the new study. Physiologist Alan Hofmann, who has studied bile acids for about 50 years, thinks the discovery of bile acids on poison-frog skin is a first. (Related: "World's Smallest Frog Found-Fly-Size Beast Is Tiniest Vertebrate.") "In the frogs the acids may be shuttling out to the skin." They move them to the kidneys so you can get rid of them," she added. "Your body has bile acids that help clear drugs. "One day I think what's going to be shown is that bile acids help transport alkaloids to skin glands and protect the frogs," she said. And in fact, Boston University researchers recently said they'd found evidence that sugar may boost antibiotics' effectiveness against bacterial infections.Īs for the bile acids, she imagines they may help explain the frogs' immunity to the ant-borne poisons, as well as how the poisons get from ingested ants to the frogs' skins without harming the amphibians. "During times of war, soldiers have taken sugar and rubbed it into their wounds to prevent infection," Clark said. (Related: "Toxic Frogs Get Their Poison From Mites.") It's still a mystery why the skins should secrete sugars and bile.Ĭlark suspects the sugars-obtained via the ants the frogs eat-may have a protective function in the amphibians' damp, moldy environments. (Also see "Poison Frogs Losing Their Toxicity, Study Suggests.") The chemical analyses suggest bile acids and sugars exist in roughly the same amounts but outnumber the mass of poison alkaloids by roughly ten to one on the frogs. The chemicals had been "lost in the mush" of ground-up skins in other expeditions, said Clark, who just completed her Ph.D. "Our sensitivity to detect and analyze compounds is much greater, so we can do a lot more with a lot less."įor frogs of the Mantella genus of Madagascar, the device helped isolate bile acids and sugars never before seen on frog skins. (The Society owns National Geographic News.) "Skinning a standard practice, but in the last couple of decades, improvements in technology have skyrocketed," said Clark, a former grantee of the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. Now, alongside her father, electrical engineer William Clark, herpetologist Valerie Clark-an unabashed frog lover and occasional frog licker-has co-created and used an electro-stimulation device to help extract chemicals out of skin glands without killing the frogs. ![]() The practice, however, was focused almost entirely on extracting the toxins, which can have pharmaceutical applications. (See your frog pictures.)įor about 50 years researchers have skinned poison frogs and ground up the tissue to study its chemistry. It's a discovery perhaps only a frog-licking scientist could make: Some toxic frogs secrete sugars and bile acids in addition to their poisons, a new study says. ![]()
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