Frogs have the ability to learn words in eggs

This amphibian can identify the smell of enemies since they are still in fetal form, US scientists claim.

Tree frog . Photo: newint.org

When injured by enemy attacks, frog-like amphibians, lizards often secrete a pheromone to warn others. After the eggs hatch, young frogs will have to learn how to distinguish the smell of pheromone from the secretions and the smell of predators.

A group of experts from the University of Missouri, USA, posed the question: Can tree frogs develop the ability to identify enemies much sooner, ie when they are still fetuses? The team put tadpoles on injured tree frogs and the abdomen of flowers into two separate buckets. Flower abdomen (also known as water gecko, flower bellyfish), is an amphibian of Asian origin and specializes in eating tadpoles of other amphibians.

Then, they scooped up some water from two buckets and poured it into a basin. Experts put some frog eggs in this basin and some into buckets containing flower bellyts. They did it for 6 consecutive days, each day the eggs were put in water for 3 hours. Two weeks after hatching, tadpoles hatching from eggs in pots stop swimming immediately when released into salty water. Meanwhile, tadpoles in the other group did not have any reaction.

Many previous studies have demonstrated that frogs can learn to distinguish the taste of food just before the egg hatches. Therefore, the University of Missouri scientists believe that the learning process of tree frogs begins in the fetal stage.