Even After Being Eaten, This Beetle Has Two Ways Out Alive

At a glance, the Japanese water scavenger beetle Regimbartia attenuata looks like any other beetle. It is small, black, and pleasantly round. It has your standard set of beetle legs (six) and is otherwise unassuming. It is, you might imagine, the exact kind of bug that a frog would seek as a snack. But this water scavenger beetle is impervious to trials and tribulations that would kill any other insect. For one, it can pass through one end of a frog and emerge, utterly unscathed, out the other end.

Shinji Sugiura, an ecologist at Kobe University, first learned of the beetle's abilities while investigating how insects defend themselves against frogs. He collected a variety of insects found in a frog-filled paddy field and fed them to his amphibians in the lab. When a frog ate any other species of beetle, it defecated the insect, several days later, as a carcass. This was perhaps to be expected. But the water scavenger beetle had other plans. If the beetle is swallowed by a frog, it can zoom on through the digestive system and be excreted within six minutes, alive and apparently none the worse for wear. Sugiura found that 90 percent of water scavenger beetles clawed their way out the frog's derrière alive, according to the 2020 paper he published in Current Biology.

As you enjoy footage of the following experience, please note the nonchalant nature of the beetle and the freaked-out vibe of the frog.