Amphibians, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 30, 2017

Hind Sight: Blind Tadpoles See Via Eyes in Tails

If you've ever wished you had eyes on the back of your head, meet the amphibian with eyes on its butt: Researchers have enabled tadpoles to see through eyes grafted onto their tails. The project represents a promising step forward in the world of organ transplants and regenerative medicine, the...

May 15, 2017

To Avoid Being Eaten, Tadpoles Aren't Choosy About Escape Vehicle

Newborn poison frogs of Peru have quite an appetite. If left home alone in their hatching pool, the ravenous tadpoles will eat each other. To keep the tadpoles from gorging on their siblings, their doting father will carry them one at a time on his back and drop them in...

May 27, 2020

Meet Goliath, a Massive Tadpole as Long as Your Face

UPDATE: The tadpole titan affectionately known as Goliath died in 2019, according to a tweet written on May 26, 2020 by herpetologist Earyn McGee; she introduced Twitter to Goliath in 2018, when this article was originally published. Scientists with the Southwestern Research Station in Arizona preserved the tadpole and are...

May 19, 2022

What's the difference between a frog and a toad?

The main difference between frogs and toads can be seen in their hind legs and skin. Both frogs and toads are amphibians that belong to the scientific order Anura within the animal kingdom. In general, toads have warty, drier skin with heavyset bodies and stumpy legs, whereas frogs have silky...

Jul 29, 2023

Axolotl: The adorable amphibian that can regrow its body and stay looking young forever

Name: Mexican salamander (Ambystoma mexicanum) also known as an axolotl Where it lives: Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco, near Mexico City What it eats: a variety of small invertebrates, along with some small fish Why it's awesome: Despite its rarity, the axolotl's incredibly cute looks has made it one of...

Oct 18, 2023

Toxic pigment that causes red hair discovered in 10 million-year-old frog fossil

Paleontologists have discovered the earliest molecular evidence of the toxic pigment that causes red hair in the fossil record — in 10 million-year-old frog fossils. The ancient amphibians had preserved fragments of pheomelanin (also spelled phaeomelanin), a yellowish-red pigment that produces ginger-colored hair in animals, including humans, according to a...

Dec 30, 2023

Paradoxical frog: The giant tadpole that turns into a little frog

Name: Paradoxical frog (Pseudis paradoxa), also known as shrinking frog Where it lives: Northern South America and Trinidad What it eats: Invertebrates, mainly insects Why it's awesome: This rather odd species is unusual because it gets smaller as it grows up — it is notably larger in the larval stage...

Jul 3, 2017

Animal Sex: How Western Toads Do It

The western toad is seemingly unremarkable, lacking conspicuous characteristics that set it apart from other toads. But what it lacks in physical appearance it more than makes up in peculiar mating behaviors. The western toad (Anaxyrus boreas) is a wide-ranging species that can be found throughout the western United States...

Feb 9, 2018

Toad Eats Beetle, Immediately Regrets It — Watch Retching Aftermath

Toads might want to be careful what meal they catch with their sticky, pink tongues. It could be a toxic beetle that makes them throw up … and then scurries away to tell the tale, a new study from Japan finds. Unfortunately, toads have to learn this lesson the hard...

Mar 5, 2018

Experts Are Stumped by the Toad with a Stump for a Face

Scientists recently took to Twitter to puzzle over an unusual sight captured by a biologist in photos and video: a toad that had no face. The toad, a fully grown adult, had a healthy-looking body and legs, but it was entirely lacking eyes, a nose, jaws and a tongue. Instead...

Jun 6, 2018

This Toxic Toad Could End Up Killing the Predators on Madagascar

Talk about toxic relationships. An invasive species of toad in Madagascar is even more dangerous to local wildlife than previously suspected — its poisonous slime is deadly to just about any local predator, including endangered lemurs, that tries to eat the amphibian. The Asian common toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus) is a...

Mar 28, 2019

Gory Photo Shows How a Mystery Predator Turned a Toad Inside Out

Jan Freedman, curator of natural history at The Box — a museum in Plymouth — was walking with his family at the Venford Reservoir in Dartmoor when his 8-year-old son spotted the gory corpse, he told Live Science in an email. In a photo of the remains, which Freedman shared...

Sep 29, 2020

Snakes disembowel toads and feast on the living animal's organs one by one

Pity the toads that encounter Asian kukri snakes in Thailand. These snakes use enlarged, knifelike teeth in their upper jaws to slash and disembowel toad prey, plunging their heads into the abdominal cavities and feasting on the organs one at a time while the toads are still alive, leaving the...

Aug 31, 2021

Cannibal toads eat so many of their young, they're speeding up evolution

The hatchlings of the invasive cane toad in Australia don't stand a chance against their deadliest predator: cannibal tadpoles who guzzle the hatchlings like they're at an all-you-can-eat buffet. But now, the hatchlings are fighting back. They're developing faster, reducing the time that hungry tadpoles have to gobble them up,...

Dec 7, 2021

Toxic cane toads are invading Taiwan. Conservationists race to contain warty amphibians.

Conservationists in Taiwan are racing to contain an invasion of non-native and highly toxic toads before the warty amphibians cause widespread damage to their new ecosystem. The cane toad (Rhinella marina) is a highly toxic species of toad native to the Americas, from the Central Amazon in Peru to the...