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Article: Just turn your back, Mom.(ZOOLOGY)(Brief article)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- May 6, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A female in a species of legless amphibians called caecilians nourishes her youngsters by letting them eat the skin off her back, says an international research team.
Caecilians, which look like worms or snakes, burrow through the soil in the tropics. Some species lay eggs, and quirks of several of these species got Mark Wilkinson of the Natural History Museum in London and other researchers wondering whether these morns fed their young. The hatchlings had scraperlike teeth, for example, and they hung around their mother for their first weeks of life.
Now studying the egg-laying African species Boulengerula taitanus, Wilkinson and his colleagues have ...