Strange Fanged Frog Has Live Births

Researchers have recently discovered a species of Asian fanged frog that doesn't lay eggs like most of their kind, but instead gives birth to live tadpoles. Such a characteristic even sets them apart from an already small and exclusive group of live-birthing frogs.

"Almost all frogs in the world - more than 6,000 species - have external fertilization, where the male grips the female in amplexus (the frog mating embrace) and releases sperm as the eggs are released by the female," Jim McGuire, a herpetologist at the University of California in Berkeley, recently explained to the Agence France-Presse (AFP). "This new frog is one of only 10 or 12 species that has evolved internal fertilization, and of those, it is the only one that gives birth to tadpoles as opposed to froglets or laying fertilized eggs"

According to the researcher, those other dozen-or-so frogs that give live birth do so through some very unusual reproductive strategies, such as carrying fertilized eggs in pouches or pits on their back, giving birth to tiny froglets (never seeing a tadpole stage), or even swallowing fertilized eggs and brooding tadpoles in their stomach.

Compared to those strategies, simply giving birth to healthy tadpoles may seem rather vanilla, but Ben Tapley, a leader of herpetology at the Zoological Society of London, assured the BBC that this is what makes the newly discovered frog, called Limnonectes larvaepartus, unique. (Scroll to read on...)

"They're relatively dull frogs, actually," he said. "To find out something totally surprising about a frog you would barely notice in the forest is really cool."

Asian fanged frogs earned that name for a pair of tooth-like projections on thier lower jaw that helps them grapple in territorial fights. It is estimated that there are up to 25 kinds of these scrappy frogs in Sulawesi Island, Indonesia. However the region's forests are slowly disappearing, and experts worry that the frogs will follow suit.

"It's great that we're learning about these species before it's too late," Tapley said.

A full analysis of L. larvaepartus and its unique reproductive strategy was published in the journal PLOS One just before the turn of the new year.

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