The upside of toxic parenting: How poison frogs protect their young

Don't let anyone tell you toxic parenting is all bad. The strawberry poison frog (Oophaga pumilio) uses to make their babies unpalatable to predators by feeding them unfertilized eggs laced with bitter alkaloids. This means of chemical defense is currently unique to the species. That's the word from a study headed up by researcher Ralph Saporito of Ohio's John Carroll University. From National Geographic:

For their study, the researchers measured alkaloid content in strawberry poison frogs during different stages of development. In one group, tadpoles were reared and fed by their mothers, and a second group was reared by the researchers and fed with eggs from another species of frog not known to harbor alkaloids. As the tadpoles from both groups developed, the team analyzed their alkaloid contents. The results were clear-cut: Tadpoles reared by mom contained alkaloids in most stages, whereas tadpoles from the second group showed no sign of these chemicals, according to the study, published November 12 in the journal Ecology.

Read the full story here. Photo: Robert Pickett/National Geographic