Foster tadpoles trigger parental instinct in poison frogs
(PHYSorg.com Biology)

Poison frogs, especially male poison frogs, are very caring parents. After the tadpoles hatch, the males piggyback their offspring to distant pools spread around the rainforest where they can feed and develop. In a recent study, a team of researchers from Vetmeduni Vienna, the University of Vienna and Harvard University show that this parental behaviour can be triggered experimentally. When unrelated tadpoles are placed on the backs of adult frogs, male - and even female - `foster parents` make their way to pools in the forest in the same way as if they had picked up the tadpoles themselves. The experiment showed for the first time that an external stimulus can trigger complex behaviours such as parental care in amphibians. The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.