DMC-FX7
ƒ/5.6
5.8 mm
1/100
80

…make them cute, but the eyes are even more interesting.

Frogs have binocular vision to catch flies. Tadpoles have eyes on the sides of their heads, a common difference between predator and prey.

The eyes move halfway through life, and so the visual system in the frog’s brain needs to be rewired. The nerves from half of the tadpole’s eyes must remap to the other half of the brain to properly process the new overlapping field of view.

The ephrin B gene modulates the axon’s growth cone in the optic chiasm (a crossroads junction of sorts) to achieve binocular vision. The same gene serves the same function in mice, but is silent in fish and chicken, which lack binocular vision.

12 responses to “Tadpole Lips”

  1. wow, interesting. And what about the kissing for that frog-into-prince conversion so vox populi? Do you have any data on that matter?

  2. Cool Picture. Even more interesting commentary.

    Alieness: My guess is that princesses’ have tunnel vision to get to the right frog — and the right alignment of vision may have to take place befor e lock-in and metamorphosis occurs.

    Let’s wait to see how Jurvetson Pro opines on the matter…

  3. we haven’t discussed the ephrin X2a gene that controls the eyes in the back of my mother’s head.
    😛

  4. wow, lei, you have a mother with a lot of vision!

    8888-)

    drona: thx for the input! I presume you are right about princesses having the tunnel vision to get to the right frog… Because, see, we alienesses do have this… "7th sense"?

    In our case we do not spot the right frog, but the correct pirate. I spotted mine already! Anyway it´s the same thing: I am sure that the day I kiss him it will turn out that he is a prince. My prince. P-)

  5. Interesting commentary. I knew their eyes moved to a binocular orientation from tadpole to frog but I’ve never considered the raw complexity involved with the switch.

  6. Wow!! Very cool photo and description!

  7. What a pair of smackers. Nice work….

    Macro 1-2-3

  8. Amazing and fascinating!
    After two years trying to get decent photos of the gray tree frog tadpoles that grow in our deck pond from egg to frog, I’ve never once seen their lips or gotten nearly as detailed a photo! How did you do it?

  9. i am just amazed that you could get this close and make these tadploes so big and give them personality! just one amazing picture!

  10. Hi, I’m an admin for a group called World Of Macro Picture Perfect <> Post1 comment on 2 please, and we’d love to have this added to the group!

  11. This is a Perfect Shot!
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    World of Macro picture perfect

  12. Wow, and they have to learn to understand 3-d vision during the gradual transition, too — "funny how I’m seeing double a little… overlapping… it sure makes that fly look funny…"

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