Skip to main content

Site Banner Ads

Site Search

Search

Home Up Here Publishing

Mobile Toggle

Social Links

Facebook Instagram

Search Toggle

Search

Main navigation

  • Magazines
    • Latest Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Up Here Business
    • Visitor Guides
    • Move Up Here
  • Sections
    • People & Places
    • Arts & Lifestyle
    • History & Culture
    • Travel & Tourism
    • Nature & Science
    • Northern Jobs
  • Newsletter
  • Community Map
  • Contests
    • Writing Award
  • Merch
  • Visitor Guides
  • Subscribe/Renew

Frogs That Come Back To Life

March 2018

What can humanity learn from the miraculous wood frog?

By Jessica Davey-Quantick

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. Frogs That Come Back To Life

It’s the dead of winter and the wood frog has no heartbeat, no brain activity. Covered in ice and frozen nearly solid, it waits for its time to RISE FROM NEAR-DEATH—or rather, to defrost.

“They look like they’re totally dead, and then they’re not,” says Janet Storey, a research associate at the Institute of Biochemistry at Carleton University. Her lab is one of just a handful around the globe studying these cryo-frogs. Up to 70 percent of the wood frog’s body freezes in the winter. But unlike other creatures, their cells don’t burst like frozen pipes. Instead, they draw most of their body water into the abdominal cavity and between their skin and muscle. That means ice forms there and not inside actual blood vessels, where it can cause potentially fatal damage. Storey says wood frogs also limit the total amount of ice that forms in cells by using sugar and salt to trick the cells into expelling water. “The cells go, ‘Holy crap, it’s way too salty outside!’” she says, which causes the cells to dehydrate.

The cold-blooded wood frog lives further north than any other amphibian in North America, reaching into the Mackenzie Delta in northern NWT. Their powers of regeneration are one of the main reasons they’re as prolific as they are. And as the planet’s climate changes, these adaptable creatures are spreading even farther north.

Is there something we can learn from the wood frog? Is there a way they can help our species increase our odds of survival in frigid climates or perhaps even one day colonize a faraway frozen planet?

Currently, individual human cells can be frozen, as well as “anything that’s really thin and flat” like human corneas, skin and heart valves, says Storey. But anything bigger tends to not do well in a deep freeze. “So far there’s nobody that’s been able to freeze an entire organ and get it to survive and function when it comes back.”

Studying the frogs could change all that. Still, the manphibian (a cold-immune human-wood frog cross) remains within the domain of science fiction. At least for now.

March 2018

Who you gonna call? Jill Rivera, zombie hunter. That's who. Photo by John Pekelsky

Are You Ready?

Prepare for the worst with our Northern Zombie Survival Guide

By Jessica Davey-Quantick

Who you gonna call? Jill Rivera, zombie hunter. That's who. Photo by John Pekelsky

July 8th, 2025 July 8th, 2025

March 2018

Photo courtesy of Shawn Kitchen

The Man With Nine Lives

He’s been shot at, hit by a truck and fallen from the sky. Meet Shawn Kitchen.

By Katharine Sandiford

Photo courtesy of Shawn Kitchen

July 8th, 2025 July 8th, 2025

Related Articles

UP HERE - MAY/JUN 2025

-----

A Gentleman and a Scholar

How a Cambridge Bay man helps keep Wikipedia informative, grammatical and civil

July 8th, 2025 July 8th, 2025

Throwback Thursday

Photos by Laurie Sarkadi

Soaring Above the Stereotypes

These women bush pilots earn top marks in a very macho milieu

July 8th, 2025 July 8th, 2025

UP HERE - MAY/JUN 2025

Photos by Arty Sarkisian

Why Is This Man Smiling?

Joseph Murdoch-Flowers has spent years tackling some of Nunavut’s darkest problems. He’s done it with law. He’s done it with advocacy. And he’s done it with karaoke

July 8th, 2025 July 8th, 2025

Throwback Thursday

Published in Up Here Magazine July/August 2008

Getting the Party Started

In the north, something's always shakin'—celebration, gatherings and jamborees jam-pack the annual calendar. Here's the lowdown on the very finest festivals in the territories. 

July 8th, 2025 July 8th, 2025

UP HERE - MAY/JUN 2025

Photo by Corey Myers

Some are Called to Greatness

Prime Ministers come North as politicians, the best leave as Canadians

July 8th, 2025 July 8th, 2025

Throwback Thursday

Up Here Magazine May/June 2008

You've gotta paddle here!

Nahanni. Alsek. Thelon. The North's rivers are legendary, and no one knows them like the pros. So when our greatest canoe- and rafting-guides make waves about a waterway, it's time to dig out your paddle.

July 8th, 2025 July 8th, 2025
Newsletter sign-up promo image.

Stay in Touch.

Our weekly newsletter brings all the best circumpolar stories right to your inbox.

Up Here magazine cover

Subscribe Now

Our magazine showcases award-winning writing and spectacular northern photos.

Subscribe

Footer Navigation

  • Advertise With Us
  • Write for Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimers & Legal

Contact Information

Up Here Publishing
P.O Box 1343
Yellowknife, NT
X1A 2N9  Canada
Email: info@uphere.ca

Social Links

Facebook Instagram
Funded by the Government of Canada