Horse racing officials have a new problem called Frog juice – its a painkiller 100 times stronger than morphine and it comes from the backs of a poisonous South American frog. It’s called dermorphin. When sneaky trainers use it, the horses get high, feel no pain, and run faster. Its almost impossible for doping testers to detect the stuff, and illegal labs have started synthesizing the drug because there just not enough of these frogs to to make all the Frog Juice needed.
Frogs are full of surprises. They keep scientists pretty busy. They’ve found dozens of life-saving and helpful drugs from all sorts of frog species. One that can cure stomach and foot ulcers, others that help hospitals fight antibiotic resistant bacteria, one that reduces blood pressure, and even one that kills HIV cells.
Believe it or not, our froggy friends can also predict earthquakes! They sense radon gases that come out the Earth before a quake hits. They are a kind of earthquake early-warning-system because they rush out of their hiding places and head for high ground 3-5 days before a quake hits so they don’t get squashed by falling rocks and landslides.
Frogs can jump 20 times their own body length. Now - If we could jump that far we’d be able to jump 100 ft in a single leap (that’s about 30 m) – Just think how many Olympic medals you could win! And it wouldn’t hurt a bit when you landed - if you were doped up on Frog Juice!