Beneath the still, murky waters of South American swamps, the Surinam toad lies almost perfectly flat, a mottled square of skin and bone that looks more like a rotting leaf than a living creature. Her life is built on vanishing into the muck. Yet during mating, something astonishing happens: as the pair tumbles through the water, the male presses fertilized eggs into the soft skin of her back, one by one, like coins into wet clay. Her body accepts them. The skin swells, reshapes, and slowly seals, forming dozens of living chambers. She becomes a moving landscape of life, a quiet, patient cradle.

Inside each pocket, a tadpole grows in complete darkness, skipping the usual free-swimming stage. Weeks later, the skin begins to shudder. Tiny, fully formed toads punch their way out, exploding through the surface. Within hours, the cratered back flattens, heals, and the swamp swallows her shape again, as if nothing impossible just happened.