The case of the midwife toad Cover
Podcast Mentions

The case of the midwife toad

Arthur KOESTLER

London. 1971. Hutchinson and Co. 22x14,5. 187p.

Podcasts 1
Quotes 5
Huberman Lab

This book by Koestler recounts the story of Paul Kammerer, a scientist who claimed to have experimentally proven inheritance of acquired traits. Kammerer conducted research on midwife toads, claiming they developed new traits when forced to live underwater. The book details the controversy surrounding Kammerer's work, including the discovery of injected ink to fake results, leading to Kammerer's suicide.

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So in the beginning of the 20th century in Vienna there was a researcher called Paul Camere was a very famous and also very colorful figure who did experiments on many different types of animals he di...

— Episode: Dr. Oded Rechavi: Genes & the Inheritanc...

Episode: Dr. Oded Rechavi: Genes & the Inheritance of Memor...

This book by Koestler recounts the story of Paul Kammerer, a scientist who claimed to have experimentally proven inheritance of acquired traits. Kammerer conducted research on midwife toads, claiming they developed new traits when forced to live underwater. The book details the controversy surrounding Kammerer's work, including the discovery of injected ink to fake results, leading to Kammerer's suicide.

"

So in the beginning of the 20th century in Vienna there was a researcher called Paul Camere was a very famous and also very colorful figure who did experiments on many different types of animals he did experiments on toads that are called the midwife's toad because the male carries the DX.

And this is a very colorful book about it from Kessler telling the story of what happened and he there are a couple of types of of toads some of them live under water and some of them live on land and these toads are different in the shape and in the behavior.

So of course the capacity to live under water is one thing but also the morphology and appearance changes the toads live underwater develop these new pital pads is black pads on their hands that allow the males to grab onto the female without slipping for mating for mating.

And the ones on land don't have them he claimed that he can take the toads and train them to live underwater changing the temperature and all kinds of things is very difficult animal to work with eventually according to camera they will acquire the capacity to live underwater and also change the physiology and develop these new black new pital pads on their heads.

With this discovery he traveled the world became very famous and this was just the beginning of the previous century as the person who found the proof for inheritance for carat rates despite the controversy and so on and they are in the beginning of the realization of how it actually works with DNA and so on not with DNA but with natural selection DNA came later.

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