Desert Frogs 'Fog Up' to Collect Water

[Frog News]

Livescience.com (Utah, USA) September 30th, 2011 12:15 PM: Desert Frogs 'Fog Up' to Collect Water

Australian green tree frogs manage to hop around the deserts of northern Australia during the dry season without dehydrating. Now, a new study solves the mystery of how: The frogs jump from cool night air to a warm burrow, 'fogging up' like a pair of glasses.

The amphibians then absorb the water that condenses on their skin, a clever adaption that allows them to draw water out of the air in a time of almost no rain.

The finding explains not only the frogs' survival but also their odd habit of late-night rambling, said study researcher Chris Tracy, a postdoctoral scientist in zoology at Charles Darwin University in Australia.

"Every once in a while, we would find frogs sitting on a stick under the open sky, on nights when it was so cold they could barely move," Tracy said in a statement. "It was a real puzzle."

Tracy and his colleagues reported their work in the October issue of the journal The American Naturalist.

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