Frog’s Song May Soothe Diseases
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
The love song of the lonely toadfish is giving scientists new insight on fighting muscular diseases.
Blessed with a face that only a mother could love, some males of a type of toadfish called the plainfin midshipman work hard for a date, hiding under rocks in shallow waters and humming to attract egg-laying females by vibrating a set of sonic muscles on its air bladder 6,000 times a minute for more than an hour at a time.
That kind of muscular capability could lead to clues on fighting human muscle diseases, says Kuan Wang of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Wang hopes to learn enough about how the toadfish sonic muscle works to coach human muscles to work faster and longer.
