MetaFilter posts tagged with amphibian

'Alien scene' of tadpoles' feast

longsleeves — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:43:08 -0800

"Mountain chickens have very peculiar breeding habits" "Alien-like" scenes of tadpoles feasting on eggs emerging from their mother have been caught on camera. The footage marks the success of a captive breeding programme for the critically endangered mountain chicken frog, one of the world's largest frogs. (BBC) Not for the easily squicked.

Grass Roots. Blue Sky.

netbros — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:40:11 -0800

Stories that Fly is a citizen media project that features a growing collection of digital stories about general aviation. The stories are contributed by student journalists, aviators, and interested community members and cover regional airports, events, and people in the Ohio aviation community.

Deft Palate

bonobo — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 19:29:56 -0800

Two-hundred -and-forty million years ago, a recently-discovered amphibian hunted with a special feature: teeth in the roof of the mouth. Found in modern-day Antarctica, the fossil of this possible relative to the modern-day salamander resembles something more akin to a crocodile. Meet Kryostega collinsoni.

Wolverphibian!

never used baby shoes — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:55:26 -0800

A new study has found that 12 species of African frog have retractable claws. All twelve species are members of the Artholeptidae family, and should not be confused with the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis). Full study here.(pdf)

Hands across the water.

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:29:16 -0800

What do you do when you're a Panamanian golden frog and you need to let that certain special someone across the way know you're, um, interested? Sure, you could croak a few sweet nothings in her ear, but those rushing jungle streams can drown out even the most virile of frog voices. So, you... wave! Yeah, give her a little wave! A BBC film crew has captured footage of this rare (and, according to their article, now extinct) amphibian waving, fighting and mating. [NOTE: last link includes hot froggy ménage à trois. Surely NSFW!] Here's a National Geographic documentary on earlier efforts to treat the Chytrid fungus-induced disease that has decimated the golden frog population.

And we thought putting them through college was hard!

Afroblanco — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 22:31:29 -0800

Today in weird animals : An international group of scientists has described an animal that provides nutrition for its young by letting them peel off and eat its skin.

Salamander Feeding Movies

MiguelCardoso — Fri, 23 May 2003 21:07:28 -0800

Yes! Gulp Your Food Down! Feast your eyes on snackist salamanders and this future classic: not a salamander, but a very strange suction-feeding tadpole. [Quicktime required. ]