Bizarre Limbless Amphibians That Look Like Huge Worms Feed Babies With Microbes From Their Fatty Skin Layer [Study]

A bizarre creature allows its babies to tear off and eat its fatty skin layer. According to a study, it was reportedly for the young's nourishment and to enable the growth of their microbiome.

Caecilian Microbiome

Caecilians can act as loving mothers to their young. In some species, moms feed their babies from their skin, even after they develop baby teeth.

The new study is the first concrete proof that such an incident occurs in any amphibian. However, it is known that many animals convey germs to the next generation through parental care in some manner, ScienceAlert reported.

The authors discovered this occurring in caecilians out of all the amphibian species. Caecilians are mysterious, yet their parental abilities may make them more useful as research subjects than other well-known amphibians.

Previous studies on amphibian microbiomes have yet to produce any definitive findings, according to the researchers, because so few frog and salamander species provide parental care for their children beyond laying eggs. On the other hand, caecilian babies could get a lot of attention from their mothers.

The researchers remark that even when the period of skin feeding (or maternal dermatophagy) ends, a mother and her offspring frequently remain together, coiling up as a family. According to Marcel Talla Kouete of the University of Florida, they always find the mother with them when they find the eggs. They never witnessed a youngster without a mom present.

Kouete and his associates wondered if maternal dermatophagy would serve as more than just a source of food, possibly aiding caecilian offspring in acquiring beneficial microorganisms akin to how human infants receive microbes from the birth canal and breastmilk.

They looked for solutions by researching the Central African species of Congo caecilian known as Herpele squalostoma, which demonstrates maternal dermatophagy.

According to the study, the environment's bacteria were the juvenile caecilians' microbiomes' least significant source. However, all juveniles shared part of the skin and gut microbiomes they acquired via coiling and skin feeding with their moms.

According to senior author David Blackburn, herpetology curator at the Florida Museum, there is still a tremendous amount of caecilian biology that we just don't know anything about. This is largely because they can be difficult to find. This is the first published analysis of a caecilian microbiome they know of.

The study was published in Animal Microbiome.

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What Are Caecilians?

Caecilians, pronounced seh-SILL-yens, are long, slender animals that resemble worms or snakes but are amphibians without legs. Almost 200 species of caecilians have been identified by science, ranging in size from the Cameroonian behemoth Caecilia thompsoni, which is nearly 5 feet tall, to the 3.5-inch-long Idiocranium Russell, per National Geographic.

Caecilians frequently have extremely tiny eyes, which are assumed to be only capable of distinguishing between light and dark. The caecilians' faces have a pair of teeny, chemically sensitive tentacles that can locate food and perhaps even aid in navigation.

The caecilians have no arms or legs, but they are skilled diggers who use their powerful head and body-length muscles to push through mud and soil like a piston in an automobile.

From grays and blacks to vivid blues, caecilians come in various hues. Pink underbellies and purple topsides are characteristics of some species. Others have several vertical stripes resembling a coral snake.

Researchers observe that trapping a caecilian can be like attempting to get a good grip on a bar of soap because of the smooth and sticky skin of the species. The epidermis of some species, including the Siphonops paulensis of Central and South America, contains glands that release toxins that can harm red blood cells in some animals to protect them from predators.