• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Wolverine Frog Breaks Its Bones To Make Claws When Threatened

January 27, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

The vicious claws of the hairy frog were first discovered around the year 1900, but it wasn’t until after the turn of the millennium that we found out how these bizarre amphibians grow them – or break them, as it were. Yes, when aggravated the hairy frog (Trichobatrachus robustus) actively breaks its own toe bones, which then puncture the skin resulting in a cat-like set of claws, which they can rake across the skin of their aggressor. No wonder they call it the horror frog.

Claws are rare among amphibians, and unlike those seen in mammals they don’t have a keratinized veneer. The wolverine frog’s claw are also transient, slipping in and out of the skin of the fingers. Whether baring the claws is an active process, meaning the bones slip back inside when the frog is relaxing, isn’t known for certain, but it seems the frogs can actively create the claws by snapping their own bones. 

Advertisement

Researchers working with wolverine frogs observed how they would use them when being handled, writhing their bodies and using their claws to rake along the handler’s skin with the goal of making cuts. And apparently, they can be pretty brutal.

“Durrell (1954) later provided the first report of handling live Trichobatrachus and raised the more likely possibility that these claws are for defence as they can inflict ‘deep bleeding wounds [to] the person holding it’,” wrote the authors of a 2008 paper. “This claim is verified by Cameroonians who hunt Trichobatrachus for food using long heavy spears […] or machetes such that they can kill the frogs without handling them and being harmed.”

wolverine frog
The placement of the wolverine frog’s “hairs” helps it care for its brood. Image credit: Emoke Denes, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

They therefore seem to carry out the same function as many mammalian claws, only with a much more badass point of origin. And that’s not the only wolverine-like feature of horror frogs.

Horror frogs are also known as hairy frogs due to the bizarre fleshy filaments the males develop during mating season. They’re not hairs like those on our heads, but instead long strands of flesh containing blood vessels, which enable them to take in more oxygen through their skin when the time comes to watch over their brood.

Advertisement

It’s possible that being an amphibian is in part to thank for the frogs being able to sprout their claws in this rather savage way, as this group of animals are pretty gifted when it comes to regeneration. A similarly brutal approach to self defense is seen in the Spanish ribbed newt, found in the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco, which pushes its ribs through its skin when threatened. 

To add insult to injury, they also a secrete a poison through their skin which means that when the salamander’s aggressor gets nicked by its prey’s sharp broken ribs, it gets a nasty dose of toxicity aimed to put it off its meal. Spiky and poisonous? We’ll pass, thanks.

[H/T: ZME Science]

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Wall St set to open flat on fears over slowing economic growth
  2. U.N. concerned at U.S. pushbacks of migrants who may need asylum
  3. Brazil’s Eletrobras to receive $500 million in regulatory decision
  4. Elon Musk Delivers “Bad News” About The Much-Hyped Cybertruck

Source Link: Wolverine Frog Breaks Its Bones To Make Claws When Threatened

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • We’ve Found Our Third-Ever Interstellar Visitor, Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild, And Much More This Week
  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Interstellar Object, Cheesy Nightmares, And Smooching Orcas
  • World’s Largest Martian Meteorite Up For Auction Could Reach Whopping $2-4 Million
  • Kimalu The Beluga Whale Undergoes Pioneering Surgery And Becomes First Beluga To Survive General Aesthetic
  • The 1986 Soviet Space Mission That’s Never Been Repeated: Mir To Salyut And Back Again
  • Grisly Incident In Yellowstone National Park Shows Just How Dangerous This Vibrant Wilderness Can Be
  • Out Of All Greenhouse Gas Emitters On Earth, One US Organization Takes The Biscuit
  • Overly Ambitious Adder Attempts To Eat Hare 10 Times Its Mass In Gnarly Video
  • How Fast Does A Spacecraft Need To Go To Escape The Solar System?
  • President Trump’s Cuts To USAID Could Result In A “Staggering” 14 Million Avoidable Deaths By 2030
  • Dzo: Hybrids Beasts That Are Perfectly Crafted For Life On Earth’s Highest Mountains
  • “Rarest Event Ever” Had A Half-Life 1 Trillion Times Longer Than The Age Of The Universe – How Did We See It?
  • Meet The Bille, A Self-Righting Tetrahedron That Nobody Was Sure Could Exist
  • Neurogenesis Confirmed: Adult Brains Really Do Make New Hippocampal Neurons
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version