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For information on how to unsubscribe, as well as our privacy practices and commitment to protecting your privacy, check out our Privacy Policy. By looking at the cricket frog, researchers have discovered the secrets to their strange locomotion, and it has all to do with some high-speed bellyflops. Cricket frogs Acris crepitans in the family Ranidae have long been known to be able to traverse the water's surface, seemingly without sinking, in a form of locomotion known scientifically as skittering.
But how are they doing this? To find out, the team took to high-speed videography to slow down the frogs' movements across a body of water. Cricket frogs are pretty small and would fit on the thumb of an adult human's hand, yet they possess extraordinarily fast motion. To record how they were traveling over the water, the team set up a camera to record at or frames per second.
A tank containing water and floating platforms was set up, and the frogs were filmed crossing from one end to the other. Most frogs jumped three to four times across the surface โ and, surprisingly, were recorded fully submerged in the water before each subsequent leap. The team observed wild frogs jumping up to eight times in a row.
While there are still questions about the belly-flopping frogs, we'll be watching that video on repeat until we find out. The paper is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
