According to an article today by Miwa Suzuki, researchers in Japan have developed the transparent frog. Advantages to this see-through thin-skinned amphibian include:

Fewer needs for classroom dissections; students can see the working organs within the living frog.

Medical researchers may be able to observe effects of their interventions as they occur-and follow any subsequent events. For example, no need to interrupt the frog’s life to follow cancers, or the ongoing effects of toxins.

Masayuki Sumida, the main researcher, stated they used artificial insemination to combine recessive genes to achieve this frog variation.

In Texas, we used to watch a pair of pink geckos who would park on the screen of the kitchen window at night and wait for bugs to be attracted to the light. Their fingers and toes were splayed in that fingery way geckos have; they effortlessly adhered to the window. The geckos’ skin was quite pale—perhaps not as much as that of the new frogs-but what looked like liver, kidneys and heart were visible through their abdomens pressed against the screen in the kitchen light.