The Feature

What Alters Our Genes

For a time, it was the most famous fraud in biology. From 1906 to 1923, Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer reported remarkable results in experiments with the midwife toad. Highly unusual for an amphibian, Alytes obstetricans mates on land, not water, and the males incubate the eggs on their legs, also on land. But when Kammerer housed midwife toads in a hot, dry terrarium, they spent most of their time in a nearby basin of cool water: they mated there, and mom deposited the eggs there rather than having dad carry them. It was odd enough that so intrinsic (and eponymous) a behavior was so malleable. But Kammerer found something else.