tadpoles – FYFD

“Tadpoles: The Big Little Migration”

Amphibians like toads are often indicator species for their ecosystem because they are vulnerable to changes on both land and water. In this short film, videographer Maxwel Hohn follows the migration of western toad tadpoles in British Columbia, showing their daily underwater journey from deep waters, where they can hide, to warmer, shallow waters, where they eat. Over the days and weeks of their early life, millions of tadpoles make the journey, their bodies morphing as they do. Eventually, they will hop away as toadlets. (Video and image credit: M. Hohn et al.)

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July 10, 2026

The Best of FYFD 2020

Juvenile catfish convect for safety in large numbers.

Gliding birds get additional lift from their tails.

The classic diagram of a flat-plate boundary layer.

Young tadpoles use bubble-sucking to breathe.

2020 was certainly a strange year, and I confess that I mostly want to congratulate all of us for making it through and then look forward to a better, happier, healthier 2021. But for tradition and posterity’s sake, here were your top FYFD posts of 2020:

There’s a good mix of topics here! A little bit of biophysics, some research, some phenomena, and some good, old-fashioned fluid dynamics.

If you enjoy FYFD, please remember that it’s primarily reader-supported. You can help support the site by becoming a patron, making a one-time donation, buying some merch, or simply by sharing on social media. Happy New Year!

(Image credits: catfish – Abyss Dive Center, owl – J. Usherwood et al., masks – It’s Okay to Be Smart, droplet – C. Kalelkar and H. Sai, boundary layer – J. Lienhard, bubble – A. Patsyk et al., boiling – S. Mould, ice – D. Spitzer, defects – The Lutetium Project, tadpoles – K. Schwenk and J. Phillips)

January 1, 2021

To Beat Surface Tension, Tadpoles Make Bubbles

A young, partially transparent tadpole sucks a bubble of air from the surface.

A somewhat older tadpole uses bubble-sucking to breathe.

Even nearly grown tadpoles sometimes use bubble-sucking.

For tiny creatures, surface tension is a formidable barrier. Newborn tadpoles are much too small and weak to breach the air-water surface in order to breathe. Researchers found that, instead, the 3 millimeter creatures place their mouths against the surface, expand their mouth to generate suction, and swallow a bubble consisting largely of fresh air.

When they’re especially small, some of these species are essentially transparent (Image 1), allowing researchers to see the bubble directly. But even as the tadpoles aged (Images 2 and 3) and grew strong enough to breach the surface, they observed many instances in which the tadpoles continued this bubble-sucking method to breathe. (Image and research credit: K. Schwenk and J. Phillips; via Cosmos; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)

February 27, 2020

Tag: tadpoles

“Tadpoles: The Big Little Migration”

Fediverse Reactions

The Best of FYFD 2020

To Beat Surface Tension, Tadpoles Make Bubbles