• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Yes, This Adorable Toad Really Has Heart-Shaped Pupils

April 1, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The yellow-bellied toad is sure to win the hearts of even the most hesitant of anuran appreciators, being an adorable little amphibian with heart-shaped pupils. Exactly what the pupil shape means in terms of the toad’s vision isn’t known for certain, but the staggering diversity of anuran pupil shape has taught us that previously held associations of pupil shape with lifestyle might not apply to amphibians.

Yellow-bellied toads, Bombina sp., are well suited to muddy life, being sediment-brown on top with bright – you guessed it – yellow bellies. They hibernate for a long period over the winter and then emerge in spring for the mating season. 

Advertisement

As they go in search of love, their vision is guided by heart-shaped pupils that are just one of many strange pupil shapes seen in anurans, which is the group of amphibians that encompasses frogs and toads (some of the rarest of which can be seen at ZSL London Zoo’s new Secret Life Of Reptiles And Amphibians house).

A study decided to hop into the strange world of anuran pupil shape by looking at images of 3,200 species. Doing so revealed that the pupil in anurans is a highly plastic structure that’s evolved seven main shapes during the history of the group. They did not find a significant correlation between pupil shape and the animals’ habits, except that aquatic anurans appeared to more often have circular pupils.

toad with heart shaped pupils

Get a load of those peepers.

Image credit: Matthijs Hollanders / Shutterstock.com

“Some authors tested the association of pupil shape and diel activity for some amniote clades,” wrote N. Cervino et al. “They showed a significant correlation between pupil shape and ecological niche (diel activity, foraging mode), where herbivorous (prey) mammals are likely to have horizontal pupils, diurnal predators, circular pupils and nocturnal and arrhythmic ambush predators, vertical slit pupils. However, our results suggest that in anurans, these inferences do not hold, indicating the need to explore other potential drivers of pupil evolution.”

One of those authors was principal investigator Marty Banks of the Banks’ Lab, UC Berkeley’s visual space perception laboratory, who told IFLScience that there was a curious outlier in the animal pupil shapes they studied.

Advertisement

“There’s one very clear exception for which we have no explanation: the mongoose,” said Banks to IFLScience. “It’s a small carnivorous mammal that has eyes on the front of its head. So, you’d expect them to have either a vertical slit pupil or a round pupil, but they have horizontal pupils. That animal does not fit our account at all.”

Heart-shaped or horizontal, it’s clear there’s more to the pupil than meets the eye.

[H/T: Snopes]

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Soccer – FIFA backs down on threat to fine Premier clubs who play South American players
  2. U.S. House passes abortion rights bill, outlook poor in Senate
  3. UBS clients raise $650 million for biggest yet biotech impact fund
  4. This Is What Cannabis Looks Like Under A Microscope – You Might Be Surprised

Source Link: Yes, This Adorable Toad Really Has Heart-Shaped Pupils

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • A Spinning Island Lake In Argentina Looms Out Of The Swamps Like An Eyeball
  • Mammals Have Evolved Into Ant Eaters 12 Times Since The Dinosaurs Went Extinct
  • Thieving Pulsar Spinning 592 Times A Second Reveals New Understanding Of Where Its X-Rays Come From
  • The Rise And Fall (And Lamentable Rise) Of The “Alpha Male” Myth
  • IFLScience The Big Questions: How Do Black Holes Shape The Universe?
  • North America’s Smallest Turtle Is The Cutest Thing You’ll Find In A Bog
  • “Unambiguous Signal” To Curb Emissions Now: Long-Lost Aerial Photos Reveal Evolution Of Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapse
  • 8 Children Have Been Born With 3 Biological Parents Each After Mitochondrial Transfer
  • First Known Observations Of Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry In Special Particle Decay
  • In 1973, NASA Sent Two Spiders Into Space To See If They Can Spin Webs – And They Learnt A Lot
  • Meet The Many Species Of Freaky Looking “Assassin Spiders” That Only Eat Other Spiders
  • Your Dog’s TV Preferences Might Reveal Their Personality
  • Some Human Gut Bacteria Can Absorb Harmful Toxic “Forever Chemicals” So They Can Be Pooped Out
  • You Could Float Through 10 Countries Before The World’s Most International River Spat You Out
  • Enormous Coronal Hole And Beast-Like Crawling Prominences Dazzle On The Active Sun
  • Dramatic Drone Footage Of Iceland’s Latest Volcanic Eruption Shows An Epic Scene From Hell
  • A Shrimp That Lives In A Tree? Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains Are Home To Some Seriously Strange Wildlife
  • Is NASA’s Claim That Saturn Could Float On Water Really True?
  • Pangea Proxima: This Is What Planet Earth May Look Like 250 Million Years In The Future
  • The Story Of Dogxim, The Fox-Dog Hybrid That Shouldn’t Have Existed
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version