SCIENCE LAB SPECIAL : STICKY SURPRISES

 

Amphibians with Adhesives : A slippery creature, sure, with with some sticky surprises.

On a hike through a sweaty Peruvian jungle in 2016, Kim Roelants, a biologist at Vrije University in Belgium, caught a tree frog. As the large amphibian squirmed, the mucus left on Dr. Roelants's hands turned to glue.

'' My fingers were just stuck to each other,'' he said. '' Before I knew it, both of my hands, my flashlight, everything was stuck.''

Similarly, sticky secretions are found among other frogs as well as salamanders. The animals use this natural super glue to foil both predators and overcurious scientists.

The mechanism behind this speedy adhesive -including how it evolved in unrelated amphibians - had been a mystery, Dr. Roelants said.

In research published in Nature Communications, he and his team provided an answer. Noodle-like proteins found across the amphibian family tree have been adapted by a number of species to make their own fast-acting glue.

Many amphibians produce a layer of mucus over their skin. It keeps them moist and helps them breathe. And several, including common toads and more exotic, lethal species like poison dart frogs, secrete potent poisons to deter predators.

But unfortunately, such poisons don't always act quickly, leading to unhappy results for an attacked amphibian, Dr. Roelants said. [ Asher Elbein ]