Nothing in the wild goes to waste—not even a footprint.

It turns out that Asian elephant tracks serve as important as nurseries for frog eggs and tadpoles during the dry season in Myanmar, according to a study in the journal Mammalia published in print last month.

Some tracks didn’t hold much, “maybe soda can's worth of water,” says co-author David Bickford, a biologist at the University of LaVerne, in California, via email. Sometimes, though, multiple tracks were “laid together in 'strips,' hence became more attractive for the females to lay eggs in.”

In addition to being breeding grounds, elephant-footprint pools are also refuges for adult frogs, Bickford says, and they help link fragmented frog habitats together, which is