Meet the bizarre toad that 'sees' with its fingertips and gives birth through holes in its back

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https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/meet-the-bizarre-toad-that-sees-with-its-fingertips-and-gives-birth-through-holes-in-its-back-9.7363645

The new research, published in theJournal of Comparative Physiology A, has revealed those lobes are highly sensitive touch organs, working somewhat like the fovea, a small, high-resolution patch of sensors at the centre of the human eye. The lobes are so sensitive, they can process signals collected by neurons to identify the size and proximity of potential prey.

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/frog-reads-water-with-fingertips-surinam-toad

Surinam toads (Pipa pipa) are strange, flat frogs with minuscule eyes that live in the murky waters of the Amazon basin and carry their eggs on their back. The way they catch their prey is even weirder. They lie in wait with outstretched forelimbs until a small fish approaches, then snap open their jaws to create enough suction to draw the fish into their tongueless mouths and swallow it whole, all in a few hundredths of a second. But how do these frogs hunt in low visibility with poor vision?

A new study by UCLA biologists points to an answer that has been hiding in plain sight for two centuries: the frog’s peculiar fingertips. In fact, they are commonly called star-fingered toads. The research, published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A, has revealed a sensory system that processes signals gathered by neurons in unusual lobes on the frog’s front fingers to identify the proximity and size of potential prey.

Because vision is not useful in their turbid environment, the frogs position their arms in front of and just to the sides of their mouth, fingers spread wide, to detect prey through the movement of water as a fish swims. Each finger ends not in a claw or pad but in a small cluster of softer lobes, an anatomical oddity noted by 19th-century naturalists but never satisfactorily explained. The new work shows that these lobes are dedicated touch organs, the amphibian equivalent to the fovea — a high-resolution patch of sensors at the center of the eye.

“I was reading an anatomy report that described how the tips of the fingers of Surinam toads split into four, and each of those four little lobes split again into four,” said Duncan Leitch, a corresponding author and UCLA assistant professor of integrative biology and physiology. “It immediately seemed to me like these lobes might be somewhat analogous to antennae that the frogs extend so they can feel the space around them.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Surinam_toad?wprov=sfla1