Some frogs wear bright colors to indicate they are of an extremely poisonous variety, but now they’re being outfitted with pants for science! The pants are part of a highly sophisticated tracking program to divine some interesting things about these interesting creatures.
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00:00These frogs were bright colors, which oftentimes indicates they're an extremely poisonous variety.
00:08But now they're being outfitted with pants for science.
00:12This is behavioral biologist, Dr. Andreas Pasuchinas.
00:15He and his team have been locating and fitting poisonous tree frogs in South America with
00:19little frog pants.
00:21Here's why.
00:22To study any behavior in the field, first you need the ability to find the animal, observe
00:27it and follow it around.
00:29So big challenge for this study and something I've been working on for years, trying to
00:33understand the behavior of these little frogs is putting tiny tracker tags on them.
00:40Their solution?
00:41This.
00:42Tiny little tracker tags attached to tiny little waistbands, they safely attach to the
00:45tiny frogs.
00:46And they have to be small, as the frogs they're attaching them to are only two to four centimeters
00:50big.
00:51The whole study is looking at the movements and hormone levels of three frog species,
00:55specifically looking at their ability to navigate the jungle.
00:58Two of the three species are predominantly raised by their male parents.
01:01With the study's conclusions challenging the long-held belief that rather than specialized
01:05adaptation for navigation in different sexes, there was actually a hormonal component, meaning
01:10sex hormones could have an impact on a creature's ability to navigate.