Find inspiration wherever you can… even in the anus of a frog.
These are not easy days. Despite my oppressively optimistic disposition, I am aware that the world is harder today for many, many people than it was a year ago.
I’m not blind to the struggle. I feel the struggle. I’m just constantly reframing experience through a wider, more varied, more historical lens. I’m aggressively counting my blessings. Relentlessly problem solving. Doggedly refusing to fall into the trap of hive mind. Zigging like hell when everyone else is zagging.
Also – and this is important – finding inspiration wherever it can be found.
Take, for example. the aquatic beetle Regimbartia attenuata.
A new study finds that the Regimbartia attenuata has a unique way of avoiding death after being eaten by frogs. The study – published in Current Biology – found that 93 percent of the beetles fed to frogs escaped through the frog’s anus in four hours or less. This is not a passive act on the part of the beetle. These beetles know what they are doing. Researchers clocked the fastest mouth-to-anus sprint at six minutes.
Upon reemerging into the world. the beetles were completely unfazed by their experiences and suffered no deleterious effects resulting from the journey.
The frogs, on the other hand, were likely traumatized for life.
Just imagine if your dinner sprinted through your digestive track before crawling out of your butt.
Still, pretty inspirational. Huh?
Depending upon your disposition, you’re probably thinking one of two things:
- The pandemic is terrible, but at least I’m not clawing my way through the body of a carnivore in order to survive.
- If the Regimbartia attenuata can survive a horrific journey through the belly and butt of a carnivorous amphibian, passing through God-knows-what along the way, maybe I could be a little more dogged in my approach to this pandemic, too. Maybe I could be a little more determined and slightly more persistent in my approach to life.
If you’re like me, you think a little bit of both.
Either way, it’s impressive. And pretty damn inspirational, I think.
