Earlier in the week my class was delighted to host @MyFrogCroaked to share his work on frog conservation. To prepare my students, I researched and gave a short lecture on frog biology.

I was not ready for how truly strange frogs are. Here are a handful of mind blowing facts...

1) most frogs don’t consume water orally. Instead they absorb it through their skin. Of those, many have a particular area on their belly/pelvis for just this purpose called the seat patch or the drinking patch.

2) frogs use their freaking eyeballs to help push food towards their esophagus.

Ok where it really gets wild is in the brooding of young. While some frogs are viviparous (give birth to live young) most are oviparous (lay eggs). But of that oviparous group some do truly strange things in the name of keeping their vulnerable eggos safe until they hatch.

First up is the suriname toad, which is the epitome of a trigger for any trypophobics in the audience and I’m sorry to you. After the male fertilizes the eggs he pushes them into the female’s back where they become embedded. Eventually the young pop out. It’s backney as pregnancy

Next up is the Darwin frog. To protect their eggs, male Darwin frogs “swallow” them and store them in their vocal sacs. Eventually the lil froglets get burped up by dad. Cute!

Some frogs really did swallow their young, with a hard S. The now extinct gastric brooding frogs of Australia would swallow about 40 of their fertilized eggs and brood them literally in their stomachs.

Somehow the eggs stopped the female from producing stomach acid during this time but the trade off is that she couldn’t eat anything until they emerged. Parenting, am I right???

So anyway frogs are really weird and wonderful and we out to be doing more to make sure they don’t get wiped off the plant due to chytrid fungus, habitat loss, and climate change. Follow @MyFrogCroaked for more in the way of amphibian conservation!