A female in a species of legless amphibians called caecilians nourishes her youngsters by letting them eat the skin off her back, says an international research team.
Caecilians, which look like worms or snakes, burrow through the soil in the tropics. Some species lay eggs, and quirks of several of these species got Mark Wilkinson of the Natural History Museum in London and other researchers wondering whether these moms fed their young.