Surinam Toad

The Surinam toad looks like a floating leaf — flat, brown, and star-fingered — and it reproduces in one of the strangest ways in the animal kingdom. During mating, the skin on the female’s back swells and softens; eggs sink into it and are enveloped by growing tissue, so that fully-formed toadlets eventually push out of individual honeycomb-like pockets. The result looks, to human eyes, like something out of science fiction, but it works: each baby emerges ready to swim and hunt in the slow, silty water of the Amazon basin.