A team of researchers at Charles Darwin University, in Australia, has found that male fish that mouth-brood are not always guaranteeing that the eggs they carry were fertilized by them. In their paper ...

Few sights in nature are more heartwarming than that of a mother caring for her young — unless that nurturing act ends with an episode of cannibalism. Female cichlids — fish in the family Cichlidae — ...

There are concerned, overprotective parents, and then there are cichlid fish. After a male cichlid fertilizes the female’s eggs, she holds her entire brood of embryos inside her mouth for two weeks ...

Raising babies can be exhausting—so much so that some mouthbrooding mothers snack on their young, according to a new study. A central African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni—commonly called Burton ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I first encountered a male jawfish with a ...

A study of Australian fish that care for offspring through mouthbrooding shows that things underwater are not always as monogamous as they seem. By Elizabeth Preston Lurking among the underwater ...

In an extreme feat of parenting, some female cichlid fish carry their eggs and babies in their mouths for about two weeks. In this way, the young fish and fish-to-be are protected from predators in ...

University of Maryland researcher Cheng-Yu Li was in the lab one day when he noticed a fish with a protruding jaw: a telltale sign that it was incubating eggs in its mouth, keeping its offspring safe ...