Sunday, March 02, 2008

Frogs, foam nest

It looks like someone might be washing clothes with a bit too much soap, but in fact what you see is a frog nest. There are certain kinds of frogs that whip up foam from their body for the purpose of creating an environment suitable for keeping their eggs and the tadpoles humid. I found this nest on the side of a trail at the Tapajós National Forest. Those dark spots are tadpoles.

2 comments:

Sandpiper (Lin) said...

I've heard of this, but never have seen anything this big before.

Steven Winn Alexander said...

Yeah, some foam nests get really large. I'd love to see the frogs whipping up this foam material.