Frogs on Ice

Frogs on Ice

Eye on Nature

Text: Mark Menlove
Art: Jack Unruh

One of my favorite Woody Allen films, “Sleeper,” is built around a character who is unwittingly frozen and then revived 200 years into the future to find a completely different world. It’s a funny film, but not a novel idea. From “Star Wars” to “South Park,” our culture is full of fictional heroes and villains leaping through time as human ice cubes.

Whether it is life imitating art or art imitating life, a whole movement called “Cryonics” has sprung up around the idea that future medical advancements will cure any number of terminal illnesses, maybe even reverse the dying process, and that all we need to do is freeze ourselves and wait for medicine to catch up. While it’s illegal to purposely freeze a living person, for enough cash you can have yourself frozen immediately upon death and interred indefinitely in a frozen state.

It might surprise these Cryoheads — okay, I admit, it’s not a real term — I made it up, but it sounds right to me, especially since in some cases only the head is frozen because it’s assumed that in the future we’ll be able to re-create a body or a reasonable facsimile as long as we have a functioning brain — but I digress. As I was saying, it might surprise some to know that right here in Park City we have unassuming neighbors (a lot of them, in fact), who have already figured out the secret to freezing and unfreezing themselves.

These Cryoheads are secretive about it, but with a bit of sleuthing you might be able to witness their remarkable feats — maybe even find one in his or her frozen state. One clue to look for, or rather to listen for, is the ritual song they sing before they enter and after they come out of their frozen state. It’s an odd song, to be sure: a loud vibrating reeeeeek, like the sound of a finger running across the teeth of a comb.

A friend of mine came upon this phenomenon and one of its secretive practitioners quite by accident on an early winter walk across a frozen field. Though it was bitingly cold, the ground was mostly clear of snow. He kicked over a clump of frozen grass and leaves and there, on the underside, discovered a tiny chorus frog. Frozen solid. Poor fellow, my friend thought, didn’t make it to wherever he needed to be before the cold came.

The mention of the frozen chorus frog piqued my curiosity. Imagine my surprise when I learned the frog was exactly where he needed to be. It turns out that chorus frogs, and a couple of cousin species, have developed a remarkable ability to spend the winter in a frozen state and then miraculously thaw themselves at the first hint of spring to sing their odd creaking song in the hope of attracting a mate.

Small, even by frog standards, adult chorus frogs range from three quarters to an inch and a half in length and have three rows of stripes or spots down their backs. Chorus frogs live in and around many of Park City’s wetlands, grasslands and agricultural areas. Among the first species to emerge in early spring, even before ice and snow are gone, they are incredibly adaptable and have been found at elevations as high as 12,000 feet in the Uinta Mountains. Chorus frogs breed from late winter through early summer. They are primarily nocturnal, so we hear them most often in the evenings.

Biologists have learned a great deal about the freezing and thawing process in living tissue by studying chorus frogs. Much to the chagrin of Cryoheads everywhere, (hey, maybe the term will stick), we’re nowhere near figuring out the puzzle for humans. Frogs accomplish this feat by flooding their own system with glucose, or blood sugar, as soon as ice begins to form on their skin. I should point out that blood sugar levels even a fraction of what the frogs induce would send a human into immediate coma and death, but somehow the frogs survive. The glucose actually draws fluid away from cells that would be damaged by ice crystals and, in turn, freezes the pockets between cells. As the freezing progresses, the frog’s heart shuts down, blood flow ceases, breathing stops. For all intents, it’s a dead frog. But somehow it isn’t. At the first warmth of spring, the frog reverses the process, shakes itself off, and hops away in search of love.

My newfound frog knowledge doesn’t make me want to have myself frozen. Like the Woody Allen character, I’m not sure I’d like the future world. But it does reawaken my sense of wonder for this amazing place and the creatures who share it with us.