Producing offspring pretty much happens in two ways - live birth or laying eggs. For those that lay eggs, we know the animals generally incubate the eggs before the eggs hatch. But one frog took it to the next level.
The gastric brooding frog was a ground-dwelling frog found in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia. What made it famous was the way it produced its offspring.
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The female would lay a clutch of eggs that was fertilise externally by a male. The female would then take the eggs into her mouth and swallow them.
Don’t worry, it’s not infanticide. She wasn’t eating her eggs. At least not intentionally.
Once the mother swallowed her eggs, the substance around her eggs called prostaglandin E2, stopped the production of hydrochloric acid in the mother’s stomach, effectively turning her stomach into a womb. The tadpoles secreted more of this substance from their gills after hatching to keep the acid at bay.
And yes, they hatched inside their mother’s stomach.
The tadpoles continued to grow for the next 6 weeks. During this time, the mum didn’t eat. The tadpoles grew to the point that her stomach became fully bloated, and her lung collapsed, forcing her to breathe through her skin. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
Eventually the mum gave birth by vomiting tiny froglets. And the cycle repeated, for a bit.
You may have noticed that I've been talking in past tense. Well, unfortunately the gastric brooding frog became extinct in 1981. The cause of extinction is speculated to be a combination of disease, habitat degradation and the introduction of non-native pests.
And sadly, no other animals exist that possess this unique reproductive strategy like the gastric brooding frog. Despite there being a frog that shits out live beetles, it’s not the same.