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Scientists Transplant Functional Eyes On the Tails of Tadpoles

Posted by samzenpus on from the because-they-can dept.

New submitter physlord writes in with a story about tadpoles with eyes on their tails. "Using embryos from the African clawed frog (Xenopus), scientists at Tufts' Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology were able to transplant eye primordia—basically, the little nubs of flesh that will eventually grow into an eye—from one tadpole's head to another's posterior, flank, or tail....Amazingly, a statistically significant portion of the transplanted one-eyes could not only detect LED changes, but they showed learning behavior when confronted with electric shock."

10 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Well Yeah by p0p0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "they showed learning behavior when confronted with electric shock." You shock anyone's little nub's of flesh enough and they tell you anything you want to hear.

    1. Re:Well Yeah by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "they showed learning behavior when confronted with electric shock." You shock anyone's little nub's of flesh enough and they tell you anything you want to hear.

      If you (gasp!) read TFA, they used controls with no eyes, and with regular eyes. Those with the implanted eye (the two regular eyes were removed) did significantly better at avoiding the shock than the no-eye control. Though they didn't say how much better, which makes me suspect the difference was very small (albeit statistically significant).

      The more interesting thing to me was that tadpoles without eyes could still sense when an LED was turned on.

  2. Scientists did WHAT!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    To summarize:

    Scientists removed the eyes from a tadpole and attached those eyes to another tadpole's ass, then shocked it to see if it could learn to see with it's ass. Hilarity ensued.

  3. Gives rise to a new expresssion... by Starteck81 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I'm a mom, I have eyes in the back of my ass." -Ms. Tadpole

    --
    "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
  4. Big deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Certain humans have had interchangeable head parts and posterior parts for years now. We call them "politicians".

    1. Re:Big deal by plover · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Certain humans have had interchangeable head parts and posterior parts for years now. We call them "politicians".

      I think they mostly talk out of their asses, though, and certainly not see out of them. They tend to even ignore crap that's right in front of their regular head-mounted eyes, so I'm not sure that gluing a set to their posteriors will change anything.

      --
      John
  5. Unless you want a Nobel by witherstaff · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A Doc who deliberately exposed himself to a bug for acute gastic illness earned himself a Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.

    1. Re:Unless you want a Nobel by uncqual · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes - but he was convinced that he had found the answer already. He was not, at least in his mind, using himself to test on -- he was using himself as a subject to overcome the "settled science" mentality of the entrenched medical and scientific community by showing that he had, in fact, found the answer.

      It seems to me that cases like these are quite different.

      --
      Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
  6. Re: Great time to be a blind tadpole by jcoy42 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Where the hell is the human medical technology?

    I don't know about you, but I'd just assume pass on grafting eyeballs onto my bum TYVM.

    --
    Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
  7. This is quite disgusting by OhANameWhatName · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Where's the humanity?

    Not only do the scientists blind a tadpole, but they then graft the eyes onto another tadpole and where else but onto it's arse.

    Sometimes I think that mankind deserves to become extinct.