There’s not really a good time to bring up amphibian mating habits at the dinner table. I figured that I was probably safe given that I was surrounded by scientists, but, all the same, I tried to make sure that no one was raising a fork to their mouths when I blurted out “You guys! There are frogs that have sex!”

The inspiration for my outburst came from a PLOS One paper published just before I headed out the door for New Year’s Eve dinner. In it, biologists Djoko Iskandar, Ben Evans, and Jimmy McGuire describe a frog that reproduces unlike any other known species.

Most frogs and toads look like they’re having sex when they’re mating, but this is a superficial