The Americas Explains How The Marbled Four-Eyed Frog Dies and is Reborn Every Night
The Americas highlights one of nature's most spectacular magic tricks.
The Americas is an epic journey across the world’s largest supercontinent, featuring a vast array of plants, animals, and wild tales happening in tucked away corners of our own backyards. In the most recent episode, viewers visited the Andes, a high-altitude mountain range, the longest in the Americas.
The Andes feature more than 200 active volcanoes alongside glacier-capped peaks, an extreme environment with intense weather, sweltering desert days and freezing nights. The range runs from the tip of Chile, 5,500 miles up the coast western coast of South America, through Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.
Along the way, you can find the rare spectacled bears patrolling tropical peaks in search of fruit, incredible hummingbirds fighting for thimblefuls of flower nectar, and a death-defying frog marching toward pools of glacial melt water.
How four-eyed frogs survive some of the harshest environments on Earth
Four-eyed frog is the common name given to Pleurodema, a genus of frogs with characteristic poison glands which resemble eyes. When threatened, the four-eyed frog lowers its head and raises its backside. The position raises the glands toward a predator and creates a false face, making the frog appear larger than it is.
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The genus includes 15 subspecies including Pleurodema marmoratum, commonly known as the marbled four-eyed frog. They are found in subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland, subtropical or tropical high-altitude grassland, rivers, swamps, freshwater marshes, and other watery high-altitude environments.
These ecosystems are notable for extreme temperature fluctuations throughout the day, ranging from 111 degrees Fahrenheit during the day to below freezing at night. Fortunately, the marbled four-eyed frog has evolved to endure these extremes, surviving freezing periods for up to 6 hours per night. It’s a superpowered death defying frog living in one of the world’s most extreme places.
The marbled four-eyed frog cheats death every night
Approximately 99% of the world’s tropical glaciers exist in the Andes and the largest is in Peru. While it’s cold enough there to sustain glaciers, the intense UV radiation at 18,000 feet bakes the landscape during the day. When it warms, marbled four-eyed frogs emerge from their hiding places and begin their slow climb.
These tiny frogs travel one hop at a time up the mountain in search of pools of glacial melt water, where they find mates and reproduce. It’s a multi-day trek during which the frogs endure sweltering daytime temperatures and below freezing temperatures at night. When the Sun sets and the temperature drops, marbled four-eyed frogs retreat underground to stay warm. But on the coldest nights you can’t avoid the ice.
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The ice creeps, its crystallized tendrils stretching underground to find our intrepid four-eyed frog and freeze her solid. It would be a death sentence for you and me, but when morning returns and the ice melts again, the marbled four-eyed frog pulls off a biological magic trick never before caught on film. Every night they freeze solid and every morning they return to life, continuing their journey up the mountain.
Where to watch The Americas
New episodes of The Americas air weekly Sundays at 8:00 p.m. ET on NBC, and stream on Peacock the following day!
