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Here in the Pacific Northwest spring, tiger salamanders emerge from their fossorial homes to breed, and the poisonous rough-skinned newt accelerates its activities with the warming sun.

We even come to identify with the elusive, fossorial animal, its plight not so different from our own.

The toads had always been in Kathy’s backyard, but the species is what biologists call fossorial.

"It was only useful in this one particular instance, where you have got a really specialised fossorial animal - a digger," Dr Fraser said.

"These tadpoles probably remained unnoticed all these years because of their fossorial nature, which in itself is a rare occurrence in the amphibian world," said Prof SD Biju from University of Delhi.