Amphibians like frogs and toads are a great way to observe metamorphosis . They lay eggs that develop into tadpoles, and then these tadpoles develop into froglets and toadlets until at last we have our big, strong adults that come crawling out of the water. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Except, it doesn’t always go like that. There are some amphibians that buck the egg-to-tadpole supply chain and instead do something rather incredible: they give birth to live young.

Live-bearing toads

In 1905, this idea was presented to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin by German researcher Gustav Tornier. Tornier was wielding a toad from Tanzania, the only one in the world at that time known to reproduce by giving

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