Was the bright orange glow in the bullfrog’s eye, during its final moments in the beak of a heron, caused by the sun? Or was it something more mysterious?
The accompanying footage, captured this week by Freddy Moyano in Green Bay, Wis., shows the bullfrog’s left eye glowing and blinking a bright orange after the amphibian was nabbed by a least bittern.
While the sun’s reflection and rustling leaves would seem to answer this mystery, Moyano stated in his YouTube description that the sun was not at the proper angle for that to have occurred.
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“The sun was not behind my back as I was filming on the East side of the path, by a pond. The sun was setting on the West,” Moyano wrote. “And the frog appears to gaze towards me and then fade with the shake of its predator. This is the only moment of the five minutes I taped where it happened, shortly after the frog was caught, still living.”
Freddy Moyano
The wildlife videographer, who also published an extended version with more details and special effects, added: “Very unique to experience while on the field especially how [the orange color] fades out almost as it life was leaving the poor frog.”
Moyano, an actor and voice-over specialist, told FTW Outdoors that the scene was reminiscent of the 1984 science-fiction movie, “The Terminator,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the cyborg assassin with a glowing red eye.
Green Bay is the world’s largest freshwater estuary and researchers are trying to map a Northeastern Wisconsin location to become a National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR). It would become the third NERR on the Great Lakes and 30th nationwide.
