Frogs Are Belly-Floppers

Certain species of frogs appear to hop across the surface of water in a process that's been called "skittering." It's like watching someone skipping a stone across the surface. While the frogs go pretty fast, it would be pretty rough to hit the water as hard as a stone does. So how do they do it? A team led by engineer Talia Weiss of Virginia Tech put some northern cricket frogs to the test and filmed them with a high-speed camera. When the film was slowed to 5%, they could see that the frogs are actually submerged in a kind of belly-flop. They don't sink all that deep, though, and use their webbed feet to re-launch themselves into another belly-flop. This kind of motion is seen in cetaceans, so it's less skittering and more like "porpoising." Read more about this research at ScienceAlert.  And if you see a remix of this video with the appropriate sound effects (whee! plop) let me know. (via Damn Interesting)