I bet it tastes like chicken …

Hacking their way out of the dense underbrush I can only assume makes up most of the junglous (it’s a word!) and remote Kalimantan region of Indonesian Borneo, a bunch of biologists with way too much grant money on their hands from the National University of Singapore say they have successfully tracked down the whereabouts of a rare lungless frog.

Whew! I know, right ? ‘Cuz I was startin’ to get worried about that little fella!
Yay science!

 ”The discovery of lunglessness in a secretive Bornean frog supports the idea that lungs are a malleable trait in the Amphibia, the sister group of all living tetrapods. Amphibians may be more prone to lunglessness since they readily utilize other methods for gas exchange.” the eggheads wrote for a recent issue of that hot-read Current Biology.

Their report reads all scientific-y, but it’s really kind of cool when you break it down to the nittay grittay …

See, Tetrapods come in three groups:
1.) Amphibia (frogs, toads, newts, salamanders … SLIMIES, but some I bet you’ve eaten …)
2.) Sauropsida (birds and some reptiles – see note from No. 1)
3.) Synapsida (mammals — uh huh, that’s right kiddies — that’s the group WE’RE in … and our pets and whatnot ;)

So does this mean we could eventually devolve into lungless creatures?!?
The Borneo bioheads think not — calling this Kermit an “evolutionary enigma”. But The Cookie thinks it just may be possible!
After all, we’ve already seen the devolution of the brainless mammal …

*deep breaths … while you still can