Frog Love: 5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including a revelation about peeing in the shower
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 18, 2016 5:08 AM CDT
Frog Love: 5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week
This frog happens to reside in Iowa.   (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Ambitious frogs and an "extinct" meteor were among the discoveries to make headlines this week:

  • Frogs Discover New Way to Have Sex: Scientists have known of six ways that frogs copulate. Now they've found No. 7, thanks to a group of dedicated researchers who spent eight hours a night for 40 nights standing in streams during India's monsoon season. The full explanation of the "dorsal straddle" is a little gross.
  • Biscuit-Sized Rock Is One of a Kind: The Earth has just given up a very alien secret: Scientists say a rock found in a limestone quarry in Sweden is the first of its kind to have been discovered on our planet, a "biscuit-sized" remnant of a space rock they believe collided with another much larger one. The newly discovered rock is unique because it's considered "extinct," and it was nearly overlooked for a bizarre reason.

  • This Might Be the First Mammal Lost to Climate Change: Scientists say they've found the first extinction of a mammal species that can be chalked up "solely or primarily" to human-induced climate change. The unlucky creature is the Bramble Cay melomys, or mosaic-tailed rat, first found on a tiny coral cay off the coast of Queensland, Australia, in 1845. Another rodent might have gotten the unwanted distinction first, if not for cats.
  • Numbers Add Up: Peeing in the Shower Makes Sense: To pee or not to pee in the shower, that is the question. Various surveys have shown that lots of people do it, and now IFL Science weighs in with some hard numbers. The site found that taking away one 1.6-gallon flush across 319 million Americans every day results in some fairly remarkable water savings.
  • Scientists Finds a Mouse That Gets Periods: Just 1.5% of mammals menstruate and 99.9% of those are primates. That's why scientists are amazed by the spiny mouse—the first rodent shown to menstruate with a cycle remarkably similar to humans. The reason this discovery was long overlooked is a deceptively simple one.
Click to read about more discoveries. (More discoveries stories.)

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