Weird narture: species of frogs raises babies in their mouths

It's called Darwin's Frog (Rhinoderma darwinii) after Charles Darwin, that first discovered them and it's a species running extinct that lives in Argentina and Chile.

The vulnerable species is one of two members of the only genus on Earth that rears its young inside of its vocal sac, a job taken on by the males.

"They have a small opening below their tongue. … After [the eggs] hatch, he takes the tadpoles into his mouth and manipulates them through that opening and into his vocal sac," Danté Fenolio, a conservation scientist with the Atlanta Botanical Garden, explained to me today.

"For about 60 days, they go all the way through to development inside his vocal sac. At that point when they are ready, fully developed, he coughs up fully formed miniatures of the adult."

MSNBC Cosmic Blog | via