​A glass frog that becomes mostly transparent during sleep may hold the key to understanding blood clots in humans, the BBC reports.

Scientists have known about the glass frog for a long time, but they did not know how it becomes transparent.

Now research has shown that the frog is able to coagulate blood in its body without being adversely affected by blood clots.

The obtained data can help the medical understanding of blood clots – a common serious disease.

The glass frog—the size of a marshmallow (weighing only 70-80g and measuring 19-24mm)—spends its days sleeping on green leaves in tropical forests.

To avoid the attention of predators, the creature becomes 61% transparent.

“If you turn these frogs over, you can see how their heart beats. You can see through the skin and you can see the muscles, most of the body cavity is really transparent,” Jesse Delia, a research fellow at the Natural History Museum in New York, told BBC News.

Now research by Delia and Carlos Taboada at Duke University in the US has revealed how glass frogs perform this very unusual function.

Scientists measured their opacity and discovered that the creatures collect blood in their livers.

“They sort of collect most of the red blood cells in the liver, so they’re removed from the plasma,” but the plasma is still circulating, Delia explains, noting that they do this without forming a blood clot.

Up to 89% of the animal’s blood cells are combined, which almost doubles the size of the liver and allows the frog to become transparent.

At night, when the creature wants to become active again to hunt or mate, it releases red cells from the liver, which shrink again.

Taboada explains that the frog is able to coagulate blood when necessary, such as when it is injured.

This ability to selectively pool and clot blood is the creature’s “superpower,” he says, and could open the door to a better understanding of blood clotting in general.

In most animals, blood clotting leads to the formation of blood clots, which can be life-threatening, such as heart attacks in humans.

But the researchers note that putting this knowledge into practice in human medicine could take decades.

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