The life of a toad

On september 2nd 2022 it was a regular Friday night and I was walking back to my dorm after my practice. When walking up my stairs I heard something from the distance and it appeared to be coming from the grass. I had a feeling it was a toad. I proceeded to walk down the stairs then began to turn on my flash to see where it was. When walking around I finally found the toad there on the grass with its back turned to me. The toad was a greenish brownish color with many rough dots on its back. I proceeded to slowly walk over to it step by step and realized that it looked very dry, unlike frogs that are usually very slimy. As I got even closer I had a feeling that it would try to keep its distance and try to run away, just like I said it hopped away onto the concrete. A few of my teammates then began to come over as well, one of them named Diego began to tell me that some toads are poisonous so that's when I began to take a few steps back and left back to my dorm.

In my research I learned that toads are harmless to humans if we just don’t bother them. Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the Bufondiea family. Toads have pretty short legs and are usually the same size or smaller than a regular frog. Since they have such short legs they do not like to hop away when they move. They prefer to crawl just because it makes it easier for them to move around. Toads have pretty rough skin unlike frogs that usually have smooth and slimy skin. These toads are commonly either brown and green have crests behind their eyes, but also have warts mostly on their backs.
Toads are usually found in grassland like fields and infront of peoples yards, something that I also learned from toads is they almost only eat insects most of the time due to them not having any teeth at all. Usually people can't identify if it's a frog or not but something that I found out when doing research is that toads are nocturnal, their size is somewhat different from a frog and they have shorter heads than frogs. These creatures usually have a lifespan between 10-15 years and also don't usually make it that far due to them getting killed and eaten. People who have eaten toads before, say that they taste very nasty and also have very sticky tongues. Another very interesting fact that I found out about these toads is they eat their own skin. The toads kingdom is: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Amphibia, Order: Anura, Family: Bufonidae, Genus: Bufo Garsault, and Specie: Bufo Bufo.
The toad’s main predators are snakes. Snakes are very dangerous and are the reason why most toads don't live a full life. Toads are usually born in water and only go back to the water to breed during mating season, when they lay eggs they lay them in strings. Something really good about these creatures is since their shade is brown they can camouflage with their surroundings and hide from predators. Toads don't need their noses to breathe out because they are able to breathe out through their skin. This is very helpful because just in case their nose stops working somehow they will still be able to breathe. Toads are ambush predators, meaning they sit back and wait for food to come to them. Female toads make a special sound/call when they lay their eggs to inform the male that they do not want to mate, just by them making that certain sound keeps the males away.

References
(n.d.). https://toadsnfrogs.com/toad-facts/

Publicado el 27 de octubre de 2022 por douglas305 douglas305

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