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SURINAM TOAD (Pipa americana)

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Originally appearing in Volume V26, Page 136 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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SURINAM See also:

TOAD (Pipa americana) , an aglossal tailless Batrachiar., rendered famous by its mode of See also:reproduction, first observed in 1710 by the Dutch anatomist F. Ruisch. It inhibits See also:South See also:America See also:east of the See also:Andes and See also:north of the See also:Amazons, and is thoroughly aquatic. In its extremely flattened See also:head it is paralleled by two other vertebrates only, which, curiously, inhabit the same parts of South America, viz. the Silurid See also:fish Aspredo batraclaus and the Chelonian See also:Chelys matamata; the end of the snout and the angles of the jaws See also:bear several lappets, the fingers terminate in a See also:star-shaped appendage, the toes are very broadly webbed and the eyes are See also:minute and without lids. The eggs are carried on the hack ny the See also:mother, and the skin thickens and grows See also:round the eggs until each is enclosed in a dermal See also:cell, which is finally covered by a horny lid, believed to be formed by a secretion of the skin or else to represent the remains of the gelatinous See also:capsule which at first surrounded the eggs. These, which may number about one See also:hundred and measure five to seven millimetres in See also:diameter, develop entirely within these pouches, and the See also:young See also:hop out in the perfect See also:condition, without a vestige of a tail. Pairing takes See also:place in the See also:water, the male clasping the See also:female round the See also:waist. The way in which the eggs reach the back of the female has been observed in specimens kept in the See also:London Zoological Gardens. During oviposition the See also:cloaca projects from the vent as a See also:bladder-like pouch, which is inverted forwards, between the back of the female and the See also:breast of the male, and by means of this ovi-positor the eggs are evenly distributed over the whole back How the eggs are fertilized has not been ascertained. AUTHORITIES.—G. Gronberg and A. von Klinckowstrom, Zur Anatomic der Pipa americana," Zool. Jahrb.

Anat vii. 609; A D. See also:

Bartlett, " See also:Note on the Breeding of the Surinam Water Toad," Proc. Zool. See also:Soc. (1896), p. 595.

End of Article: SURINAM TOAD (Pipa americana)

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