National Geographic: The Body Changers Page #4

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After eight crispy months,

skies darken.

The monsoon has arrived.

The pounding of the rain has stirred

strange creatures beneath the soil.

In this small, evaporating pond,

animals race against the clock

to transform.

Tadpoles of the spadefoot toad

must absorb their tails,

grow lungs, sprout legs.

They must transform from

fish-like swimmers

with gills to hopping air-breathers.

If changing from tadpole to toad

isn't miracle enough,

tadpoles of this species have two ways

to do it,

the nice way and the not so nice.

In this hot summer,

the pond is shrinking quickly.

It could become a death-trap,

a cauldron of bouillabaisse.

As the water level drops,

time is running out

for the tadpoles to become toads.

Meanwhile, another creature

joins the fray.

Fairy shrimp may have lain dormant

underground as eggs for years,

waiting for just the right conditions

to rush through their lives.

As the pool dries up,

it gets more crowded.

Tadpoles bump into more and more of

these crustaceans.

Advantage:
tadpole.

If they end up snacking on

lots of Sonoran scampi,

the tadpoles sense that their pond

is shrinking fast.

There's something about fairy shrimp

that throws a chemical switch

inside some of the tadpoles.

And these gentle browsers now

begin to transform into brutes

that will stop at nothing

to become a toad.

Some of the tadpoles are

turning into cannibals!

This is body-changing with attitude.

The cannibals are lighter

in color and larger.

A huge muscle forms in the jaw,

the better to grab their neighbors with.

We're no longer on golden pond.

The cannibals grow at breakneck speed

on their unneighborly diet.

On the fast track, they will need only

two and a half weeks to become toads.

The slower, mild-mannered tadpoles

need six weeks to grow up.

The extra time helps them become

healthier adults than the cannibals.

But often in the desert,

time is a luxury.

And the race goes to

the swift and brutal.

It was a remarkable turning point

in evolution

when a fish transformed

to emerge from the sea,

gulp air and drag itself around.

But what took eons in evolution is an

everyday occurrence in tadpoles.

To reach adulthood, spadefoot toads

must live fast and hard,

then dig down into cool damp soil

before the next drought arrives.

For others in the desert,

the season of change has also arrived.

On an acacia blossom, an egg barely

visible to the human eye hatches.

A bristled beast emerges.

This caterpillar has a problem.

If it's ever going to become

a butterfly,

it must first survive its life

as a larva.

The desert is alive with predators

like ants and wasps.

This caterpillar has

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