It happened in Panama. A few years ago, he was finishing up his research on the parental behavior of a type of glass frog. A few of these transparent, half dollar-sized frog were brought to the lab for a photo shoot.
An exciting discovery was made by it.
"I wanted to take a picture of the belly of a glass frog." He put them in a petri dish and saw their circulatory system through their translucent skin.
The blood was gone when he returned.
It felt like the veins had melted away. The American Museum of Natural History in New York has a biology department.
He took a video of the glass frog's heart rate and sent it to his friend, Carlos Taboada.
Taboada says it was odorless. The red vessel in the frog's belly was not seen. It wasn't normal. I had never seen that before.
Taboada wanted to know where all the frog's red blood went.
In a new paper in the journal Science, Taboada and their partners offer an answer as to why red blood cells are hidden.
While the glassFrogs are asleep on green leaves, they are vulnerable to predator so they become super transparent. The organs are coated in white. The Frogs probably have an alternative process that allows them to keep their cells alive. The red blood cells of the frog are released at night when they are active.
Taboada says the frog packs most of its red blood cells in a small amount. It's normal that those conditions can cause clotting disorders. The researchers say that knowledge of how the glassFrogs avoid a blood clot could lead to new drugs for humans.
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