Happy Monday, people. We hope you’re ready for some weird, because we’re about to bring it in the form of a wriggling frog-sac full of tinier frogs.
First discovered in the forests of South America by Charles Darwin, Rhinoderma darwinii employ one of the most interesting child-rearing techniques we’ve ever seen. The male members of the species “carry” the young by scooping up newly hatched tadpoles and storing them inside their specially adapted vocal sacs. The tadpoles writhe around inside their father’s sac until they’ve metamorphosed, at which point — as the BBC so eloquently puts it — the male frog “[vomits] out fully formed froglets”:
Pretty excellent, right? Check out some video footage of this process at National Geographic and the BBC.
[Head Like an Orange via Radiolab]
