14 Days of Genitals, Day 14: NO DAYCARE NEEDED

Hey you. Hey there. Thank you for making it through these last 14 days with us. We know they've been sometimes gross, sometimes horrifying, and perhaps unneccessarily educational. We're all glad to be here on today, this day of Love/Unnecessarily Commercialized Expression of Sexual Interest, because now we can all stop thinking about animal dicks. But you know what? Even if you didn't get some shitty chalk-flavored heart candies or any form of sexual gratification, at least you aren't throat-pregnant.

NO CANDY? SUCK IT UP.

The Darwin frog (which should have been called the Russian Nesting Frog) male is a pretty devoted daddy. After he and mommy make sweet, sweet external fertilization, they lay their eggs in some moist dirt. Mom then ditches to do other shit, but dad lingers and after 20 days he just can't handle it anymore: one by one he swallows his eggs because they're on the cusp of hatching.

But he doesn't digest them. Instead he carries them around in an enormous throat pouch. There they hatch, and the subsequent median of 11 larvae per papa frog are nourished by the lining of their father's throat pouch which they absorb straight through their skin (lazy little bastards don't even chew). They also metamorphose there over the course of 52 days, and finally hop up out of daddy's esophagus.

The noble Darwin's Frog: Dad of the Year

So yeah. Happy Valentine's Day - be glad you're not pregnant in your throat.

XOXO,
Meaghan and Amy

WORKS CITED

Goicoechea, Oscar, Orlando Garrido, and Boris Jorquera. "Evidence for a trophic paternal-larval relationship in the frog Rhinoderma darwinii." Journal of herpetology (1986): 168-178.

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