The toe pads that allow tree frogs to cling to slippery surfaces share their origin with human hair.
Toe pads are complex structures that are held in shape by a rigid network of proteins. Wim Vandebergh and his colleagues at the University of Brussels found 200 gene sequences expressed in the toe pads of the tree frog Hyla cinerea (pictured), but nowhere else in its toe. The authors identified five keratins that seem to be the main structural components of toe pads; the genes that encode these five proteins have the same evolutionary origin as those for the keratins found in mammalian hair follicles.
The authors say that these proteins must have arisen in an early tetrapod ancestor before diverging to become hair in mammals and toe pads in frogs.
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Frog feet share human hair origin. Nature 495, 285 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/495285d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/495285d
