Oh my God frog twitter please help me -- one of our darts (tinctorious) somehow escaped his heavily fortified tank and when I scooped him up he had *several wriggling tadpoles* on his back. There is also a clutch of eggs in the tank WHAT DO I DO @Blackmudpuppy

wife is homicidal, obviously

This is cool as shit tho, holy moly. Will try to get pics. The male is *hopping around* with *squirming tadpoles* on his back

Okay here’s dad. Those two black/grey lumps on his back are tadpoles, their heads are pointing up and their tales curl to the right. I put a dish with some water and plant debris in the tank, that’s evidently what he was looking for

The sheer determination, can you imagine? He managed to squirm through a lid that was weighed down with two volumes of the OED, make it down 4 feet to the floor, and hop halfway across the living room before he was spotted by my wife and kids, who were eating lunch

It became apparent a few months ago that our frogs were male and female (can't be sexed when they're young), but everything I've read about dart frog breeding suggested it was an esoteric pursuit, so I didn't think it was possible that they'd get the deed done on their own, but

People online are like "I've purchased a negative pressure ventilation system for my whole house to replicate the atmospheric pressure during a costa rica thunderstorm at 800 meters elevation but my frogs still won't hump," figured I didn't have anything to worry about.

The escape was quite dramatic, the kids were all screaming and the cats and dogs were briefly stunned by the appearance of a frog in their midst, gave us enough time to lock the predatory mammals in a separate room

Hopping into the inhospitable unknown, braving giant monsters all in the name of providing a better life for his children -- literally the most heroic thing I have ever seen

Here are the eggs, which appear to be in varying states of development

Update on FrogDad: he still has his two progeny on his back, so I’ve tried offering a bigger water dish to see if its more to his liking. It’s exasperating but he only wants what’s best for his kids so it’s hard to fault him

Meanwhile Mom (pictured) has just been bopping around looking for bugs to eat and living her best life, as far as she’s concerned the eggs are out so her work is done

He did it, the new dish did the trick! He hopped in and scooched his butt in the water. One slid off immediately. After a few minutes he rubbed his back foot down his back to push the other one in! This is FASCINATING OMG

After depositing the tads he spent a few minutes completely submerged in the water. Checking for predators? Or maybe just enjoying the soak? They haven’t had a water feature prior to this

With some difficulty I managed to snap a shot of one of the tadpoles. As you can see they are not terribly charismatic, although I suppose I wouldn’t be either if I had to spend my first 24 hours of existence piggybacking for dear life on my dad

(briefly interrupting this froggie thread for a word from this friendly snek we found this evening)

thread continues here: https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1287434266482061312?s=20