When Surinam Toads mate, the male fertilizes the eggs and rubs them onto the female’s back, where they adhere…and the female’s skin responds by swelling and enveloping the eggs. Then, a few months later, we get this lovely scene:
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’ve been to Surinam, but I never saw anything like that there.
Isn’t Nature wonderful!!! Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! (With apologies to Monty Python).
I remember first seeing a video of those toads when I was about 12 and being a young boy thought it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen, in fact, I still do.
That’s the strangest of all that I’ve seen–
A mutation that takes Halloween
With its blood, guts and gore,
And then mixes up more,
In the form of a fine French cuisine!
Can I just confirm that the toad in the video is underwater, and the young aren’t actually erupting out of the back and being fired across the room (as I thought at first glance when the first one shot out)?
I remember seeing video of this years ago, and for some reason, it completely grosses me out.
Excuse me while I go release some coffee out of the top end…
Phew!
Surinam was an ex-girlfriend of mine. Looks like I dodged a bullet!
I can’t help but be reminded of this photoshop:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/medical/breastrash.asp
NSFW.
looks itchy.
I’m reminded of Gremlins. Could this have been an inspiration?
Gee.
I wonder though, is there a specific reason why it is the female that evolved this capability instead of the males or is it just coincidence that it isn’t the sea horse route? (Which itself could be coincidence. I can’t remember from the posts I believe has been up here.)
For an example of a pathway, initially sloppy laying of sticky eggs could have happened to both sexes.
Gee.
I wonder though, is there a specific reason why it is the female that evolved this capability instead of the males or is it just coincidence that it isn’t the sea horse route? (Which itself could be coincidence. I can’t remember from the posts I believe has been up here.)
For an example of a pathway, initially sloppy laying of sticky eggs could have happened to both sexes.
Kawa: But how do you keep frogs from getting wet?
I don’t know why I clicked on that, I knew that it would gross me out. All I can imagine now are frogs popping out of my skin. Eeeeh…
Ooooohhh, I have toad envy. After three children, I can speak with somewhat authoritarian voice when I say giving birth through the back has got the be less painful than the vadge.
That does facinating uncomfortable things to my fertile imagination.
Could somebody please pass the brain bleach?
[blockquote]I can’t help but be reminded of this photoshop:
[Icky link] NSFW.[/blockquote]
I came in here to wonder how long it would take for 4chan to get hold of this vid and find a way to video-edit it onto something inappropriate.
Those of you with fertile imaginations or needing brain bleach? Don’t click the link.
Thanks, PZ, for reaffirming my ardent desire to stay childless… (Just because it happens naturally doesn’t mean it’s necessarily not deeply icky.)
Why do I get the distinct impression these reproduction posts PZ does from time to time are his subliminal way of expressing the sentiment “Thank goodness I’m not female”?
I imagine that the link in post #8 is the infamous “lotusboob¨
The video is pretty neat once I get past my (apparently not uncommon) squeamishness.
I am originally from Suriname (note correct spelling), but I’ve never seen one like that. Although I have heard about them in school there.
I have to say that I wish I hadn’t seen this video. I have OCD and a lesser known symptom of the disorder is persistent unpleasant thoughts intruding into your thinking. I’m going to see tiny frogs errupting from people’s flesh for so long now…
Thanks Niobe…
My nightmares have been much too tame as of late…
I had an MS student do a theis on Pipa parva, a smaller relative which lives in temporary waters in the coastal areas in the vicinity of Lake Maracaibo. In this species the young come out as tadpoles, rather than froglets. The female is ready to mate again as soon as the tadpoles are released. The tadpoles feed during their metamorphosis into toadlets, which is unusual. We would keep cladocerans in the aquaria with tadpoles to help keep the water clear. The tadpoles apparently did not eat cladocerans, but as soon as one started metamorphosis to a toadlet, the cladocera would disappear from that tank.
That lady’s voice reminds me of my mother’s whenever we’d visit a zoo or biological preserve…she’d see something naturally amazing like this and say, “God has a wild imagination…” (sigh)
Can I just confirm that the toad in the video is underwater
Yes.
And they aren’t popping through the skin or something, the skin grows thicker around the eggs.
Can I just confirm that the toad in the video is underwater
Yes.
And they aren’t popping through the skin or something, the skin grows thicker around the eggs.
…I’m going to think of this next time I get a zit. Damn you.
y’know – as much as I love the controversial posts and the religion posts and the “oh-look-what-the-silly-cdesign proponentists-have-done-now” posts…
posts like this REALLY remind me of how cool I think biology is, and why I had wanted to be a biologist before I got sidetracked by the need to make a living…
and THAT is one of the reasons I keep coming back here – stuff like this makes this accountant yell “that’s so COOL” and run off and post the link everywhere!
I showed this to my students today. They did not like me.
I am not a squeamish person in the least (blood and broken bones in real life, blood and guts in the movies), but for some reason that scene (originally viewed on the Discover Channel years ago) always gives me the willies.
I frequently have nightmares about having eggs laid under my skin, or plants growing out of pockets in my skin. This video and the links in the comments are seriously making me want to throw up.
…That said, it’s still pretty cool.
Even though I know the photo is a fake because of the lack of inflammation, etc. the picture of the breast infected with lotus seeds is somewhat disturbing. It gave me the willies more than the Surinam toad video.
Carlie if you had shown it to me when I was young I would have grossed out the rest of the class by asking you to run it again. But then I was the kid who when we were dissecting rats grossed out the class by dissecting the testes of my rat, and I wasn’t even dared or anything. Strange that I ended up with a Bio PhD, don’t you think?
They must have become overly sensitive in their old age then (unless UK kids are made of sterner stuff than US ones). When I told the local primary school children here, the other year, about the surinam toad (among other bits of amphibian biology, tetrapods in general, metamorphosis, development and evolution) they seemed quite intrigued. They also remembered the visit of the-person-with-the-frogs for quite a long time afterwards in an out of school context.
No way am I clicking that! I took physics in high school just so I wouldn’t have to see or do gross things with frogs! :)
Well that was unbelievable…..I’m with Torbjörn Larsson – how did this evolve? Its only my heavy homework that prevents me from making serious use of Google right now.
This made me itch.
Cool, but gross!
Something very disturbing about creatures burrowing into the skin…
When I was a child (nearly 60 now) a neighbor gave me a 1940’s copy of Natural History magazine with pictures of this toad. I was horrified (still am).
I don’t think the young burrow into the skin. I think the eggs are laid there and the mother’s skin grows around them. It’s an outer layer of dead skin, like a callus or something. I’m assuming that layer of skin just sheds once the young emerge.