Behavior to eat maternal skin in legless species

According to the researchers, the phenomenon of their skin-eating young offspring not only exists in a single species, but also has a long history of at least 100 million years.

The phenomenon of maternal eating was first discovered in a worm-like amphibian called Boulengerula taitanus. Now scientists publish the second case of a similar species - Syphonops annulatus.

The two species mentioned above belong to the legless family with distant relations. They are all members of tropical amphibians that look like earthworms but have the characteristics of vertebrates like jaws and teeth.

This strange eating behavior is named dermatophagy, which in Greek means caustic.

The Syphonops annulatus in the 1849 newspaper published by Charles Orbigny.

According to researchers in a report published online May 11 in Biology Letters, this is 'a strange investment form parents give their children'. They added that in both species this behavior has been established for so long that the mother's skin and the offspring of the offspring have been specialized to perform effectively.

For the offspring, its skin turns into a fat-rich tissue that provides a rich source of nutrients that is good for the development of the offspring. According to Mark Wilkinson of London's Museum of Natural History and his colleagues, the young use its specialized teeth to peel and eat the outer skin.

Similarities in the caustic behavior of species suggest that it has appeared in their general evolutionary ancestors. The ancestors of these species probably lived about 100 million years ago. Estimates are based on studies of diversification of amphibians and based on continental cleavage between Africa and South America where two caustic species are found. Previous studies were published in the June 13, 2006 issue of Nature.

Wilkinson and his colleagues suggested that the recent discovery shows that maternal eating behavior is probably very common in interrelated species.