urbpan: (Default)
[personal profile] urbpan


This little American toad was scooped up from the vegetable garden, right where we want him! (Or her.)

We were told by the man we bought the house from, that there are toads in the yard (and sometimes in the basement). We eagerly anticipated finding toads, and were delighted when one tiny one showed up in the veggie garden. As of this writing, Alexis has found three different toads in three different parts of the property.

American toads are found across eastern North America in a variety of habitats. Their main habitat requirements are shallow bodies of water in which to breed, and a source of insects and other invertebrates to eat. In our part of the world they also need some deep leaf litter or similar substrate to burrow in to survive the winter. Toads are unable to quickly escape predators, so rely on their camouflage and large poison glands to protect them. The milky white bufotoxin they exude under stress is bad-tasting (judging by the retching it inspired in my family's cairn terrier back when the family lived in Stafford and the dog frequently caught toads) but much less toxic than that of many other amphibians.

My boss recently informed me that the American toad was probably going to be moved out of genus Bufo. This made me much sadder than Pluto losing its planetary status. Bufo is the genus whose members are called "true toads," and includes the common European toad Bufo bufo. I feel sad that the American toad and the common toad may soon be separated with different genus names.

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

Profile

urbpan: (Default)
urbpan

May 2017

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
1415 1617181920
21222324252627
28293031   

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 3rd, 2025 11:41 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios