Reports are out that Katsuya Okada will be the foreign minister in Hatoyama’s first cabinet, which is (unfortunately) not nearly as cool as the footnote to the AFP report:

One of [Okada’s] more peculiar hobbies is collecting items that depict frogs. But there is a serious political point—“frog” in Japanese is a homonym for “change”—the slogan used by the DPJ during last month’s election campaign.

This is a fairly popular pun in Japan. Last year I came across this banner at the Akasaka Sacas complex in Tokyo. It says “アカサカカエル、オイシサヲカエル” (Akasaka kaeru, oishisa wo kaeru) which could be read several ways, such as “The Akasaka Frog is changing tastiness,” or perhaps “Change Akasaka and frog the tastiness.”

Interestingly, we have two articles on the link between frogs and pollution, with seemingly contradictory results. First the BBC reports that the spate of deformed frogs with missing limbs, a phenomenon which had always been thought to result from man-made environmental pollution, is actually caused by predatory dragonfly nymphs that actually eat the limb-buds from tadpoles, before they develop proper limbs when they metamorphose into frogs.

And then we have this column from Nicholas Kristof, telling us that It’s Time to Learn From Frogs. And what should we learn exactly? That industrial chemicals used in agriculture or in daily household products such as hairspray act as a weak form of estrogen on the body, causing significant sexual organ deformities in embryos of various species. It is well known that frogs are particularly sensitive to environmental pollution, which is why the aforementioned missing limb phenomenon was long thought to have a chemical trigger, but the evidence is mounting that these sorts of environmental pollution are also causing a stark increase in cases of human sexual organ deformity, particularly among young boys.

I can easily imagine some reactionary “conservative” making a pseudo-scientific argument that because we recently disproved a link between industrial chemicals and missing frog legs, we might as well dismiss the second case out of hand. This would of course be a logical fallacy, as the mechanism is clear and the evidence is plentiful, not to mention relevant so far more animal species than frogs, but don’t be surprised if you see someone trying to make such a claim.

From JT:

Thousands of frogs were found dead in a pond last fall in Japan’s first confirmed case of the amphibian-destroying ranavirus, a researcher said Friday.

The death of American Bullfrogs occurred in a man-made pond in September and October, said Yumi Une, associate professor of veterinary science at Azabu University in Kanagawa Prefecture.

The dead frogs had symptoms unique to a ranavirus infection, such as bleeding on the surface of the skin and loss or deformity of toes or webs, Une said, adding that the virus was detected in their cells.

Une did not reveal the location of the pond but said more than 10,000 frogs are believed to have died there.

[...]

A new type of ranavirus was found in American Frogs in Taiwan last year, and a gene in the virus found in the dead frogs in Japan resembles one from the virus in Taiwan, Une said.

Doesn’t “American Frogs in Taiwan” sound like the name of a community association or ethnic activist organization? I suppose they’re banding together to lobby for increased government spending on anti-frog plague research.

As if the deadly fungal plague wasn’t enough, now they’re being eaten to extinction.

How could I not point out this BBC report?

A 70-million-year-old fossil of a giant frog has been unearthed in Madagascar by a team of UK and US scientists.

The creature would have been the size of a “squashed beach ball” and weighed about 4kg (9lb), the researchers said.

They added that the fossil, nicknamed Beelzebufo or “frog from hell”, was “strikingly different” from present-day frogs found on the island nation.

Some good news from New Zealand, scientists may have found a cure for the rampaging fungal plague that has been blamed for the extinction of 40 frog species since 1980 – one third of the 120 species which have gone extinct.

Chloramphenicol, currently used as an eye ointment for humans, may be a lifesaver for the amphibians, they say.

The researchers found frogs bathed in the solution became resistant to the killer disease, chytridiomycosis.

Help is on the way, slimy friends. Now, if only they could figure out a way to prevent whatever it is that eliminated the other 80 species.

Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing see-through frogs, letting them observe organs, blood vessels and eggs under the skin without performing dissections.

Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing see-through frogs, letting them observe organs, blood vessels and eggs under the skin without performing dissections.

“You can see through the skin how organs grow, how cancer starts and develops,” said the lead researcher Masayuki Sumida, professor at the Institute for Amphibian Biology of state-run Hiroshima University.

“You can watch organs of the same frog over its entire life as you don’t have to dissect it. The researcher can also observe how toxins affect bones, livers and other organs at lower costs,” he told AFP.

 Description Stuffed to the brim with wool, very soft and cuddle friendly. Mutant frog lady is a toy perfect for the office cubicle or even a tot(adult supervised of course.)

Ingredients:
wool felt, Barbie limbs, buttons, cotton thread, mohair, wool, Barbie face

This monstrous crime against human and frog kind alike can, tragically, be purchased here.