A mother's work is never done
Here’s a fun word: oophagous (OH-ah-feh-gehs). It means living or feeding on eggs. For Mother’s Day, another Shedd mom is the strawberry poison dart frog, Oophaga pumilio. Despite its evocative common name, this species comes in a rainbow of solid colors and interesting patterns, such as Shedd’s tan, yellow and orange polka dot varieties, known to biologists as color morphs. (And, of course, these bright hues are a visual warning to would-be predators that the bite-sized frogs are toxic.) But it’s little O. pumilio’s parenting behavior that is really attention-getting.
Both parents tend the young, but the mom’s role is the more labor intensive. As the female lays three to five eggs on a leaf or within the whorl of a bromeliad, the male fertilizes them. He keeps them hydrated by releasing water on them through his cloaca. The eggs hatch in about 10 days. Then the female transports the tadpoles, one by one on her back, to individual nursery pools—anywhere water has collected, from a puddle on the ground to a hollow stump to the fork of a tree branch. Then every few days she visits each micropool and deposits several unfertilized eggs for the tadpole to eat. In fact, the tads are obligate oophages, meaning they are unable to ingest anything else at that stage. The offspring metamorphose into froglets in about a month. They stay close to their safe hidden pools until they absorb the rest of their tails. Then they’re on their own.
Posted by Karen Furnweger, web editor
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