Judges warm to Fergus’s frozen frog thesis

A non-scientific explanation of how some frogs cheat death by freezing their hearts and other organs has won a Cork researcher an international award.

Fergus McAuliffe won the top prize at the Famelab science communication competition in Cheltenham. The event brought together top science communicators from 23 countries, and he was Ireland’s first representative in the competition run by the British Council and US space agency Nasa.

With just three minutes to explain a topic without slides, Fergus, from Farran, Co Cork, first explained the context in which Canadian wood frogs evolved to let their organs survive freezing winters. He then described the freeze-thaw process in which glucose combines with water to keep cells in the frogs’ bodies alive, while water that escapes from the cells freezes around them.