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Water beetles can live on after being eaten and excreted by a frog

After being eaten by a frog, some water beetles can scurry through the digestive tract and emerge on the other side, alive and well.

Imagine yourself as an insect, a water beetle to be exact, swimming around searching for food when all of a sudden, a giant frog swallows you whole! What would you do then?

For Regimbartia attenuata, the only option besides accepting your fate and dissolving quietly is to search for the rear-end exit. Shinji Sugiura, an ecologist at Japan's Kobe University, discovered that these amazing beetles actively escape death by swimming through a predator's digestive tract and exiting from its butt, intact with no observable damage.

Regimbartia attenuata escaping from the vents of Pelophylax nigromaculatus and Hyla japonica (4× speed). Video credit to Current Biology

While rare, the phenomenon is not unheard of as certain snail species are known to seal their shells shut and await excretion to survive being eaten by birds or fish. However, what makes this particular research fascinating is that the prey (water beetle) is actively escaping the predator (frog) rather than passively waiting for the digestion process to be complete.

Hypothetical escape route of Regimbartia attenuata through the frog digestive system. Photo credit to Kobe University.

For further reading, you can click on the following link for the research article published in Current Biology on August 3, 2020.

Writing has two stages:

1. you can't stop

2. you can't start to save your life

reasons.

#053/ ∞ — [random Egypt photos]

Sleepy baby

Encounter 

by Felix Riano

A limerick:

Doesn’t look like a limerick to you? Try this:

A dozen, a gross, and a score Plus three times the square root of four Divided by seven Plus five times eleven Is nine squared and not a bit more.

Suitable for inducting future children of the night into the horror genre, for horror fans new and old, this film is an essential viewing featuring horror icon Bela Lugosi in the titular role of Dracula.

Overall, this film has quite the suspenseful cinematographic atmosphere though it can feel a bit stiff and disconnected at times. Some of my favorite scenes involve Dracula getting out of his coffin under his creepy crypt or when the camera focuses on his eyes when he compels his victims. Honestly, Lugosi brings out the Stranger Danger!!! bell warnings every time he appears on the screen.

Aside from Bela Lugosi, I personally felt that Dwight Frye and Edward Van Sloan, who played Renfield and Dr. Van Helsing respectively, really stole the show with their acting especially Frye when portraying Renfield's madness. Sloan really brings out Dr. Van Helsing's confidence in dealing with Dracula with his arsenal of crosses and wolfsbane.

The entire movie is roughly over an hour so it's a good pick for a quick horror sesh and as I've said before, due to the lack of blood and at most, suggestive biting from Dracula himself, the movie can be a good introduction to young minds ready to be warped into the horror genre.

Happy Hauntings!

Kan- wa ma kan.

It was- and it was not.

It's how all the stories start. They tell you of what was and what wasn't, but they don't tell you which is which.

Perhaps you are seven. Perhaps you are eight. You ask the sweet, greying hakawati (story crafter) "but a'amu (uncle), was it real?" Your eyes bright with eagerness and hope. And he tells you, his smile never faltering, "kan wa ma kan, my child. It was and it wasn't. Perhaps it is real. Perhaps there were caverns and theives and treasure. Perhaps there were empires and warriors and charmers. Perhaps it was the land of mysteries- the very land that Shahrazad spoke of. And perhaps it was not."

You close your eyes to better imagine the stories the old man tells. What a wild thing it was, your imagination- and even wilder his was, for the stories he crafted were his own. Flying carpets. Music. Mercenaries. A king's banquet. A marid (jinn) to make your wishes come true. "But was it?" You ask. Desperately hoping it was. And more so wishing it is. "It was and it wasn't," your hakawati says smiling.

You can smell the sweet smoke from the altars that burn ever so steadily; consuming an offering to gods long forgotten. You can hear the echoes of music long since silenced. You see the dances of people long dead. You know their stories. "But was it?" You press further. "It was and it wasn't," the old man says, his smile never fading.

You're out in the golden dunes of Arabia. A glistening object catches your eye and you take hold of it- and you are knocked back by the force of the marid storming out. "Shobeik lobeik. A'bdak bein edeik. Your wish is my command." He says. But you have no desire for anything other than answers "was it real?" You ask, but he disintegrates into whatever nothingness he came from, leaving you asking yourself whether or not it was. Whether or not you are.

You are growing up. You are now thirteen. You have yet to stop asking "was it?" Your father says it was not. Your brother says it was not. Your friend says it was not. But you are wild and stubborn. You say "but what if it was?" And they laugh you off.

Four years later and you are seventeen; and the raging fire of the stories' magic within you dims to embers. Your hakawati has long since passed away. You keep his smile tucked into a fold so deep in your heart you nearly forget about it. And you stop asking for stories. You stop asking "was it?" And what is even worse, though, is that you start to believe that perhaps, after all, it was not. That it never was.

But I am here to tell you this; it was. You spoke to the marid. You heard the music. You saw the people dancing and you smelled the offerings to their gods. It might be so deep within you, as deep as your beloved hakawati's smile is buried. And I want you to know that you, now, have your answer.

Beware All Who Enter

Here lies the passage to the dead. Or living. On undecided. Honestly, no pressure except the one you put on yourselves.

Hello, my name is Fisher (pseudonym, obviously!) and this is my personal blog. I'll mostly write or reblog about:

Horror stuff such as book reviews and movie or tv suggestions but mostly book reviews.

Paranormal shit from your haunted hollows to curious cryptids and demonic denizens

Beetles and cats cause these two are my favorite animals

Art pieces here and there. Links will be given. If I forgot to credit, please let me know.

Generally anything green. Aesthetics, fashion, nature photos, you name it. If it's green, it's in.

There will be a number of posts on Malaysian culture (Guess where I'm from?) and Islamic anecdotes sprinkled in as well.

Contents are generally posted on Thursdays after 7pm. Please keep any and all messages civil. Notice how I only use one profanity in this post. That's all. Explore safely and happy hauntings.