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- Oct 19, 2001
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I was just telling the other half about a picture I had seen of a frog with eyes in it's mouth. I saw it in a book but I'm sure it must be online some where. Can anyone provide me with a link please?
A photograph appears in the book entitled Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins, 1996, W.W. Norton & Company, on page 97 with a caption: "Figure 3.2 Macro-mutations do happen.This freak toad with eyes in the roof of its mouth is said to have been found surviving wild in a Canadian garden. This photograph was originally published in a local newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator."
On page 96, "The toad in Figure 3.2 is said by the photographer, Scott Gardner of the Hamilton Spectator, to have been found by two girls in their garden in Hamilton, Ontario. He says that they put it on the kitchen table for him to photograph. It had no eyes at all on the outside of its head. When it opened its mouth, Mr. Gardner said, it seemed to become more aware of its surroundings."
This would make a great avatar.
One wonders whether it succeeded in mating and what the offspring were like. Was it just a developmental defect or some kind of heritable DNA decoding error?
I'm not sure what sort of genetic defect would result in inwardly-inverted eyes.
I've seen photos of the creature's exterior, and the usual eye sockets are strangely dark. I haven't seen a photo or found a description clarifying whether these represent a second pair of (perhaps under-developed) eyes in the normal location, or simply empty places where eyes should have been.
My guess is that some sort of stressor / trauma messed up the embryo's development in such a way that the eyes progressed inward rather than outward.
This would not be so surprising i.e.: man made induced environmental factor which could degrade the formation of early pre-tadpole embryos.Since it developed in a water-borne egg sac, it's possible that some sort of pollutant in the water screwed up a critical phase of the process.