Page 72 - Devotion Among Animals Revealing the Work of God

DEVOTION AMONG ANIMALS

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the spawn are saved from being digested.
To guarantee the safety of their offspring, some other frogs use al-
together different methods. For instance, after the Pipa toad spawns, the
male frog gathers the eggs with his webbed feet and places them on the
female's back. The eggs stick to her skin, which begins to swell, and the
eggs are embedded in it. A thin membrane forms over the eggs. Within
thirty hours, they sink far enough as to become invisible, and the back
of the female frog is level once again. The eggs develop under her skin.
After 15 days, the back of the frog begins to stir with the movements of
tadpoles. On the 24th day, the young frogs penetrate the skin, emerge
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into the water, and they immediately seek a safe place to hide.
The midwife toad, native to Europe, spends the best part of its life
in holes on land in the proximity of water. It mates on land and, after
the female has spawned, the male fertilizes her eggs. A quarter of an
hour later, the male begins to stick the eggs together into strings, which
he then bonds to his hind legs. Wherever the male goes over the com-
ing few weeks, he drags the spawn along with him. When the eggs are
ready to hatch, the male returns to the water, where he stays until all the
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tadpoles have emerged. He then returns to his hole in the ground.
In all these examples, one important point must not be missed. The
behavior of these frogs is in complete harmony with their physical char-

acteristics. One of these frogs has a sac made for the spawn that extends
right down the underside of its body. The frog could not possibly be
conscious of this, but instead of swallowing the eggs, it takes them into
its vocal sac as if it were. The other species of frog, because it lacks the
faculty of thought and intellect, could not know that its digestive juices
would harm its spawn, much less how to stop secreting it. No living
creature is able to stop its stomach from secreting digestive juices. Yet
another species has a back uniquely suited to carry its spawn. Its phys-
ical attributes and behavior are so complex that they couldn't possibly
have developed by chance.
In each of these examples, there is an intrinsic design and plan. It

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