Horrible Toad Very Good At What It Does

It is difficult, and yet important, to practice holding multiple truths at once, such as: No animal is inherently bad, and also the Surinam toad is a toad of nightmares. The diversity of life on Earth should be celebrated, and also the Surinam toad's particular eccentricities are satanic. Every living thing is beautiful because it is alive, and also the body of theSurinam toad is an affront to beauty itself. The Surinam toad, which has the dissonantly cute scientific name Pipa pipa, is an aquatic frog that lives in the murky, tannin-dyed waters of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers and tributaries in South America. You might not have heard of the Surinam toad by name, but you have probably seen it in images circulated on the internet that highlight its most peculiar evolutionary adaptation, which is the toad's ability to give birth through its back. Most toads lay eggs in the water that hatch into wriggling, boba-bodied tadpoles. Not the Surinam toad. After she lays her eggs in the water, the male will fertilize them and then push them onto her back, where she will grow a new, thick layer of skin over the eggs until they appear studded in her back like big blackheads waiting to be popped. There the babies grow until they are toadlets, at which point they spurt from their mother's back like fat gobs of sebum. If you would like to witness this miracle of life, you may do so at your own discretion. Once freed, the toadlets jet off and grow up. The adults are extremely flat and have no tongue. They spend their days lurking like a corpse in the brown water with their big hands outstretched like Mr. Mime. When a tasty morsel swims close by, the toads open their enormous mouth to vacuum in their prey and swallow it whole. It is an oddly impressive feat for such a flat frog.

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