Beneath murky South American waters, the Surinam toad carries motherhood on her back—literally. After an underwater courtship, the male flips the female through the water, pressing each fertilized egg into her soft skin. Over days, her back swells and reshapes, sealing the eggs into dozens of living chambers. From above, she looks diseased, pitted, almost decomposing. Instead, she is incubating life under her own flesh.
Inside each pocket, a tadpole transforms in secret, skipping the usual free-swimming stage and growing directly into a tiny toad. When they are ready, they don’t wait politely. They rupture their way out, bursting through the skin in a wave of squirming bodies. It is shocking, visceral, almost unbearable to watch. Yet this grotesque spectacle is also devotion in its rawest form: a mother turned into a shield, a womb, and finally a scarred survivor.
