Bizarre: tadpoles seen wiggling inside daddy’s vocal sac (video)

Males gobbling babies. Wiggly tadpoles bulging beneath the skin. Yeah, okay, that’s bizarre, but it’s also the lifestyle of Darwin’s frog (Rhinoderma darwinii), an endangered species that was found by Charles Darwin himself. While the females carry the eggs, the male Dawin frogs carry the young tadpoles in its vocal sac (of all places!) for a fortnight. The footage was filmed and produced by EDGE Fellow Claudio...

Read More

Video: giant leaf-tailed gecko hunting at night

Footage from the BBC’s new program Madagascar. The giant leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus fimbriatus) is found on the islands of Nosy Mangabe (mongabay.com’s namesake) and Nosy Bohara. To see photos of Uroplatus fimbriatus and other Malagasy geckos: Leaf-tailed geckos of...

Read More

Video: bizarre tenrecs communicating through ‘stridulation’

Footage from the BBC’s new program Madagascar. Native only to the island of Madagascar, the bizarre tenrec communicate in a way no other mammal in the world does: stridulation. This is the scientific term for communication by rubbing body parts together, such as crickets producing sounds by rubbing their legs against one another. In this case, tenrecs are capable of communicating by rubbing special spines on their back. To read...

Read More