Bite.... You taste like my brother... okay, I am not going to eat you.

[ian]

I have been reading a book called, 'Becoming a Tiger - How Baby Animals learn to live in the wild" (Susan McCarthy, 2004)

While it contain so much of interesting short stories of animals/ baby animals. I have only come across to one case with Amphibians so far after 60 pages of reading.

Here is what is said about how animals recognize it own kind, "Many animals need to recognize their siblings. Tadpoles of the spadefoot toad sometimes turn carnivorous and eat other tadpoles. The bloodthirsty tadpole first nips the other tadpole, and if it tastes unrelated proceeds to eat it. If it is a sister or brother the tadpole eats no further. (Unless it is really really hungry.)"

Do you think Caudates do this too?

 

[william]

i believe Ambystoma opacum use this strategy, but i may be wrong

 

[kyle]

huh....I've never heard of such a behavior, but I won't say its impossible.

It would be very interesting theory to prove though, and see how widely this is accepted by larval amphibians.

 

[pollywog]

I'm sure it has been shown that Tiger Salamander larvae are more likely to cannibalise unrelated larvae than their siblings.

 

[edward]

Spadefoot toads are also more likely to cannibalize nonsibling tadpoles but I suspect that identification can be made before the first bite is taken.

Ed

 

[mike]

David Pfennig at UNC Chapel Hill (http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/pfennig/) has done most of the work on this subject (on both Spea and Ambystoma tigrinum). It's a very exciting subject. With the Spea, the tads do appear to need to bite or 'mouth' at the other tadpoles, and then decide whether or not to eat them. Additionally, the degree of kin discrimintation declines as the carnivores get more hungry. In the tiger salamanders, experimental work has shown that olfaction seems to be important in determining which larvae are kin to the cannibal, and which are not.

There are also big changes in the morphology of the larvae when they become the 'cannibal morph'.
Similar effects of kinship on cannibalism and cannibal morphs have been described in Hynobius retardatus.

Mike

 

[heather]

My Axolotl Larvae ate eachother, so i dont think its true for them...