This teeny-tiny poisonous frog from Ecuador is “Worlds Best Frog Mom”.

Its almost mother’s day! If you forgot, here’s your reminder to get your mom something nice. In honor of mother’s day, I would love to tell everyone about our little friend here. Say hello to the little devil poison frog. Let me tell you, this is one devoted mom. Any sort of parental behavior is rare in the non-mammalian world, much less so for frogs. Most frogs fertilized eggs in a suitable body of water and leave their offspring to their own devices. Surprisingly, parental behavior is found in most poison frogs, albeit from the father or co-parenting. The little devil poison frog is a unique case, because this devoted mother takes most of the brunt of childcare.

The mothers journey starts with laying her eggs. She climbs up and down trees, finding suitable pockets of water to lay her eggs. These are often inside bromeliads, a family of plants that grow on the sides of trees and form pockets of water in their leaves when it rains. Side note – bromileads are really cool and are great to own as a houseplant, I should definitely devote a post to talking about them.

A bromeliad perfect for laying an egg (photo: Charlie Neuman)

After laying a singular egg in a water pocket, she continues her search until she lays multiple eggs. This is in part to reduce the chance of predation on her entire brood. Although I couldn’t find anything definitive about how far she travels, other poison dart frogs transport their tadpoles up to 185m away, so lets just assume that will be her max distance. Now, that might seem pretty short to us, but poison frogs are so incredibly tiny, with adults clocking in at about SIX CENTIMETERS LONG, depending on the species. Unlike other poison frogs that drop their barely-formed tadpoles into water and leave, the little devil poison frog makes her rounds to all her children every single day. Why? Well to lay a nutritious unfertilized egg in the pool of water for her tadpole to eat. This has been likened to breast-feeding in mammals, and may help pass on the poisonous attribute of these froggies. Assuming that these pools are placed far apart, the devoted mom is essentially running a marathon every day for her children, all while ensuring that she also gets enough sustenance to survive.

You should also know that there is one other instance of marathon runner frog mommas. Meet the climbing mantella.

The climbing mantella, another devoted frog mom. (photo: mada magazine)

Aint she cute? She has similar behavior to our little devil poison frog, with one major difference: she lives in Madagascar whereas the little devil lives in Ecuador. That means they developed their motherly instincts separately, and even use a different part of their brain for childcare.

These froggy moms are honestly amazing, devoted, and strong. Hopefully, you have a mother figure in your life that would also run a marathon for you every day. I know mine would. If you have a super-mom, don’t forget to write her a card, get her something nice, or even just thank her for all that she does. My mom was my first reader, first subscriber, and first person that couldn’t figure out how to load the page and consequently gave me 50 views on my first article. This one is for you, “worlds best human mom”. Love you.