Lithobates sylvaticus, amphibian, frozen frog, cryogenics, #CHRISTIAN #CREATION SCIENCE #Lithobates sylvaticus

FROZEN FROGS?

Hello all my fine friends out there!

And how do you all fare? I know the southern hemisphere is welcoming spring with open arms. But here in the northern hemisphere, we are preparing for the winter months ahead. Many animals are doing so as well. Bears are consuming large amounts of food to prepare for hibernation, geese and many other birds are heading south for the winter, others are lining their dens to keep out the cold and storing food. 

But there is one animal that might surprise you. A frog; Lithobates sylvaticus. This amphibian it found far to the north in the northern forests of Canada and Alaska. It is not the typical habitat of frogs who are found in more temperate or tropical areas. For many years amphibians were classified as warm weather animals. 

Yet Lithobates sylvaticus commonly called the northern wood frog, survives winter temperatures of minus do to 80 degrees. What happens to the frogs then? Do they freeze to death? Well, that is half correct. They do freeze, just not to death. “Come winter, (these) wood frogs burrow under leaf litter on the forest floor and, when it gets cold enough, they freeze solid. Normally, freezing is dangerous, because ice crystals forming within the body can rupture the cell walls, and of course, frozen blood cannot circulate and deliver oxygen and nutrients to organs.”¹

So what keeps L. sylvaticus alive in frigid weather? Unlike cryopreservation (cryogenics) of the human body in which

legal death must occur first then the blood is drained and

replaced with a cryoprotectant solution to try to stop ice crystal formation in the organs and tissues as the corpse is cooled,  “At the time the frogs begin to freeze, the wood frogs’ livers produce massive amounts of glucose, which enters all the body cells, preventing ice from forming within the individual cells, and binding water molecules inside the cells to prevent the animals’ becoming dehydrated. They can tolerate glucose levels 100 times normal without the sort of damage diabetic patients would suffer with blood sugar levels only  2-10 times normal. This glucose prevents ice crystals’ forming inside the cells while allowing ice crystals to form outside the cells, allowing for a controlled freeze

without tissue damage.”²

We humans like to think of ourselves as intelligent, so why is it so hard for evolutionists to understand that such a fantastic thing as a frozen solid frog that comes back to life when it’s thawed out was created by an Intelligent Designer? If humans ever succeed in the realm of cryogenics, they will claim loudly and boldly of their inventions, their creations. When the truth is “the Mighty Creator designed each type of animal (and humans) with great care and attention, providing each living thing with exactly what it needs to survive.”³

Until next time, God bless and take care!

Willow Dressel

References:

^1-3O’Quinn, Jonathan C., D.P.M., M.S., Frog-sicle, Anyone?, Creation Research Society, Creation Matters, Vol 21 Number 3, May/June 2016, p 12.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/23695785