Results tagged “amphibians” from 60 Second Science

When it comes to the threat of antibiotic resistance, the World Health Organization doesn't mince words: some diseases, it says, "will have no effective therapies within the next ten years." Indeed, more than 70 percent of the bacteria that cause hospital-acquired infections are resistant to at least one of the antibiotics commonly used to treat them, and it's only going to get worse. But a chemical found on amphibian skin—produced in response to stress, injury, or contact with microorganisms—has just been found to kill some drug-resistant bacteria.

Continue reading 'Could frogs save us from MRSA?' >

For the first time, a bizarre caecilian nurturing strategy has been caught on video. If you're picturing a dark-haired woman run out of meatballs, flensing herself while weeping, I'm here to help. Caecilians are an order of amphibians (Gymnophiona). Basically they look like ferocious flesh-eating earthworms. They are annulated (composed of ringlike segments). They are nearly blind, but are sensitive to gradations of light. Caecilians are primarily fossorial (burrowers) though there are terrestrial and aquatic species. They have teeth. They range from 70 mm to 1.5 M, depending on the variety.

Here is video of an aquatic species. (Despite what the video's title, caecilians aren't worms. Neither are they eels as they are commonly called.)

Continue reading 'Mother Caecilian Serves Own Skin For Dinner' >

Like a biologically gruesome version of those Russian nesting dolls, researchers found a fossil of a prehistoric shark that ate an amphibian, which in turn had just eaten a fish. All three were preserved in what's being described as one of the first "food-chain" fossils ever discovered, adding further proof to the fact that all those cutesy drawings of big fish eating little fish eating littler fish you saw in childhood had a cold-blooded real-life analogue.

Continue reading 'It's a shark-eat-frog-eat-fish world: First food-chain fossil discovered' >