Discovery Science 🧬

stomach and increase mucus production. How the frogs were able to connect two completely different processes still remains a mystery, but they did it perfectly! Prostaglandins from the shell of the eggs, entering the stomach, practically stopped the production of acid, but not the production of mucus. Also, hormones were most likely responsible for stopping the motility of the stomach: normally, this organ should contract to move food further, but for caviar such tricks would be fatal. It turns out that under the influence of the eggs, the stomach turned from a digestive organ into something like a uterus, except that there was no umbilical cord - the eggs and later the tadpoles received nutrients from the yolk sac. Yes, exactly tadpoles! Caring mothers carried the young for up to 40+ days until it went through a full cycle of metamorphosis from a bunch of cells to a miniature version of an adult. As the babies grew, the space inside the mother frog became less and less. Her gastrointestinal tract completely stopped working, her lungs compressed and practically stopped moving air. All gas exchange took place exclusively through the skin, so it was extremely important for the mother to remain slightly moist at all times. When the development of the frogs ended, the mother evicted them in exactly the same way as they got there - through the mouth. True, there is a small nuance here. She swallowed 40 eggs, and the resulting babies were half as many. Scientists still don’t understand where half went. Perhaps they were not viable to begin with. Or maybe the female simply digested part of her offspring - now this is not known for certain. But even despite all this, the strategy of caring frogs was very successful, because the young were born completely independent and capable of quickly jumping away from predators. You probably noticed that the article talks about frogs in the past tense - made, invented, raised. Yes, unfortunately, today the caring frogs no longer use their strange method of pregnancy - they are extinct. What killed these unusual animals? Unfortunately, most likelythey were people. Less than a hundred years ago, there were two species of caring frogs in the world, barely distinguishable in appearance. Females were slightly larger than males, and during pregnancy they grew even larger. Amphibians occupied small habitats in southern Australia, small rivers, streams and lakes. They were few in number and extremely vulnerable to everything new. People contributed to the introduction of a terrible parasitic fungus into their habitat, which over the course of several decades greatly reduced the population of such unusual creatures. And since frogs were already few in number, extinction was not long in coming. Scientists, however, managed to make a bunch of notes, experiments and collect many tissue and DNA samples. Today, this material is used in several projects to resurrect caring amphibians. There are no live croaking samples f

Caring frogs: Bear babies in their stomachs and give birth through their mouths The stomach is needed to digest. There is an extremely aggressive environment: burning acid, various enzymes and constant contractions - if something gets inside, there is no chance. But the caring frogs swallowed their eggs, and after 1.5 months ready-made little frogs jumped out of their mouths. You have never seen a more strange way of bearing offspring! But how is this even possible? Why weren't the baby tadpoles digested in their mother's stomach? It’s all about an extremely unusual strategy: the stomach of caring frogs turned into a “gestational sac”, a kind of uterus, during the period of bearing offspring. Today, none of the animals uses such a device - females either lay eggs and eggs in the external environment, or bear their young where nature intended. Therefore, it is doubly interesting to figure out how frogs even adapted an organ that was absolutely unsuitable for pregnancy to raise offspring. Most species of amphibians are ready to become parents in the first year of life, but caring ones preferred to first stand on their paws, grow and gain life experience. And only then 2-3 year old females paid attention to the serenades - the louder the cry, the more enviable the groom! Males sang in their area of ​​the reservoir, in rock crevices and among stones, trying to attract as many females as possible. Due to the very difficult “pregnancy”, the frogs could only bear one litter of tadpoles per year, and the cavaliers did not have many chances - not a single one could be missed. After the fateful meeting, mating and external fertilization took place - exactly at this moment ordinary things end. Then the crazy biology begins! On average, female frogs lay from a couple of hundred to several thousand eggs, but most of them will die in the first months of life. The strategy is very simple - the more children, the greater the chance that at least one will continue the family line. About 80% of amphibians do this. But our caring ones limited themselves to only about 40 eggs. They had a completely different tactic of maximum parental care, almost unusual for amphibians. After fertilization, the female swallowed the eggs, provoking a radical restructuring of her insides. Frog eggs were also unusual, with a large supply of nutrients and a thick jelly-like protective shell. At the same time, the embryos inside the eggs produced the hormone prostaglandin, which triggered a cascade of changes in the mother’s body. In fact, prostaglandins have a wide range of effects: depending on the site of action, they can dilate or constrict blood vessels, regulating blood flow, and can trigger inflammation and increase pain. And these hormones also work in two completely unrelated directions: they affect the development of the fetus and the regulation of certain processes in the gastrointestinal tract. More specifically, prostaglandins reduce acid production in the

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Half female, half male. The strangest mutation of birds and more No, this is not a flashy headline to attract attention. Yes, in the preview photo there is a real bisexual bird, one half of whose body has developed along the male path, and the other along the female path. And the strangest thing is that it is not unique. Bisexual individuals have been found among 40 species of birds, and they are so common that scientists have a special term for this phenomenon - gynandromorphism. For such a strange creature to be born at all, everything must go wrong even before fertilization. First, an egg should appear with two nuclei instead of one. Then it must be successfully fertilized by a sperm, after which the egg has an insignificant chance of developing into an adult animal, as if sewn from two halves. Only one in thousands of gynandromorphs is eventually born. However, despite the obvious external oddities, gynandromorph birds feel surprisingly normal. They get food, communicate with neighbors, chirp provocatively and look for a mate. And although such birds do not have offspring, they live an absolutely normal life as a male or female - it all depends on which half’s hormones take over. A normal pair of female (left) and male (right) for comparison. But bisexual half-birds are flowers. And the berries are bisexual half-and-half insects, spiders, crustaceans and lizards that look just as abnormal. And they all live, hunt, interact with neighbors, and some of them even reproduce successfully, giving normal healthy offspring. To date, scientists have discovered gynandromorphs among 150 animal species, and the list continues to grow every year. But there are practically no mammals in it. After all, in some sense, mammals are special. Our bodies are designed in such a way that the sex of an animal depends not so much on genes, but on the hormones that the fetus produces in the first weeks of development. Therefore, a “hormonal battle” occurs inside the mammal between the two halves of the animal’s body. And if it does not lead to its death, then one side inevitably wins, and the animal turns into a normal male or female. You can find out that something is wrong with your body purely by chance by analyzing its DNA. Could there be gynandromorphists among people? Purely theoretically, yes, but in practice, none of these could be found. However, the very nature of gynandromorphism still poses uncomfortable questions to scientists. For a long time it was believed that the behavior of such animals is completely determined by the dominant hormonal background - that is, the bird behaves either like a male or like a female, period. But recent observations have shown that some bisexual finches exhibit a completely unique behavioral repertoire, not characteristic of either sex separately. This means that the brains of such animals can work according to their own logic - and we are still barely beginning to understand it. Author: Yaroslav Ilyin

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Gigantic Cuckoo: Meanness Size XXL Legends say that there is no place on Earth more terrible than Australia. Poisonous spiders, ubiquitous snakes, gigantic beetles and... cuckoos. Yes, the photos below are not hellish crows with bleeding eyes, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Gigantic cuckoos are the epitome of meanness in XXL size. The demonic bird is truly gigantic; there are no larger cuckoos in the whole world. An adult can reach up to 66 centimeters and gain 930 grams of meat. There is no smell of elegance here, but the hefty curved beak allows it to feed on soft fruits, tough insects, strong eggs and chicks of small-sized birds. But physical destruction alone is not enough for the cuckoo; it also wants to cause mental suffering. The blood-eyed bird terrorizes other animals with its “wonderful” songs. The repertoire includes a chaotic symphony of prolonged whistles, a crescendo of bubbling and an aria of gurgling. If you hear demonic sounds under the cover of darkness, a trip to a psychotherapist is guaranteed. Our heroine chooses habitats that match her gloomy appearance. Residents of the swampy and sparse forests of Australia, New Guinea and several archipelagos are forced to enjoy the wonderful sounds of cuckoo singing. During the mating season, from August to October, males babble louder than ever and beautifully court their chosen ones. They show care, affection and present her with wedding goodies - large insects. But this is where the romance ends - cuckoos love themselves too much to waste time on breeding. So our heroes decided to free their time from the hardships of parenthood. The female places a couple of eggs in the nest of selected victims, which are usually swallow shrikes or whistling crows. As a rule, the mother throws away the entire clutch, but surrogate caregivers will not notice this - foundling eggs vilely plagiarize the appearance of the original eggs. They are colored red or yellow-brown, and are also covered with many dark specks. They hatch into naked, blind and deaf chicks. But the weak misunderstanding quickly turns into a strong and physically developed chick. In one mug they devour everything that their foster mother has obtained. The native children cannot object to the adopted child - he is larger and stronger than his neighbors. Little parasites are in no hurry to leave the nest; they become covered with feathers only at the age of 28-30 days. Slightly grown cuckoo chicks remain near the nest and beg for food from their foster parents for several more weeks. Only when the reserves of parental love are sucked dry will the gigantic cuckoo leave the hospitable home. The gigantic cuckoo enjoys a free, childless life, but the price of such ease is ruined nests and chicks of other species dying of hunger. By human standards this is cruel, but nature knows no morals. - - - - - We have a huge group, which is 11 years old and there are many zoologists who write tons of text every day f

astelands of Western Australia into lush steppes. And in the midst of winter, cassowaries stage epic mating dances, scream throughout the forest, build nests and lay eggs. After all, while snakes and lizards are in a deep blackout from hypothermia, cassowaries can calmly breed offspring without fear of vile egg eaters. But winter is especially pleasing to dingo dogs. In the heat of the summer, they spend up to 90% of the day in the shade, barely coping with overheating. But when the long-awaited coolness arrives, they become much more active and even risk hunting larger prey. After all, their ancestors arrived in Australia from Eurasia, and the dogs have not yet forgotten that the local winter in their homeland was called summer! Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot