Eastern American Toad

The dour expression of the common toad reminds one of the proverbial grumpy old man. This countenance, in my opinion, gives them an endearing quality. As children, toads are one of the first wild animals we come in contact with that we find easy to capture and are not likely to be afraid of. Missouri is home to several species of toads, and the Eastern American toad (Anaxyrus americanus americanus) is without a doubt the most common type we will encounter. They are found throughout the Eastern United States and portions of Canada, and occur in many types of habitats, including yards, gardens, fields, agricultural areas, barnyards, porches, and walkways. The species name of the American toad is Anaxyrus, which comes from a Greek word that translates to mean King or Chief, and as one of the largest toads native to the United States it is an apt descriptor. They may reach lengths up to four inches with males being smaller than females.

 

They vary in color, and may be gray, brown, olive, or even a reddish orange. However, they are capable of changing color to some degree depending on many factors including humidity, environmental stressors, temperatures and even the color of the habitat where they live.  Sometimes there is a light stripe visible along their back and two warts on each spot located along the back, as well as large spiny warts on the legs. Usually, the belly is mottled with black or charcoal gray splotches. There are large glands located behind the eyes alongside the head. These are the paratoid glands and contain toxins called bufotoxins. These toxins are considered harmless to humans, although they may irritate the eyes, or mucus membranes. 

 Handling toads is often said to cause warts in humans. This is a falsehood, although, if you are allergic or sensitive to the substance they secrete, your skin may form painless water blisters. For obvious reasons, don’t lick the toads! To dogs, and other small mammals, however, they can be incredibly toxic and, in some cases, make your pet very sick and in need of veterinarian care. While capable of secreting toxins and poisoning animals who come in contact with them, they usually rely on camouflage, or retreat as a first line of defense.

There are some animals that have adapted to eating toads as a main part of their diet, one of the most notable is the hognose snake. These snakes have a mild toxin they deliver through rear fangs into the toad to paralyze it. This prevents it from hopping away. If they capture the toad prior to delivering this toxin they have another adaptation that aids them in eating toads. When a toad is threatened with predation, they will inflate their lungs, lower their head, and lift their body, thus making themselves larger, the snake is now faced with a much larger meal than it anticipated. It will use those rear fangs to puncture the toad, effectively deflating it with these specially adapted toad poppers.

Other animals are known to eat toads, including water snakes, garter snakes, screech owls, crows, and occasionally striped skunks. As tadpoles they are preyed upon by a wider variety of predators, including fish, ducks, aquatic invertebrates, newts, and crayfish. One pond was estimated by scientists to contain over 200,000 toad tadpoles, none of those tadpoles survived to the toadlet stage as they were preyed upon before reaching their final molt into life on land. In the tadpole stage they feed on algae, aquatic plants, dead fish, and other tadpoles. As adults they feed on invertebrates like ants, beetles, and moths as well as earthworms. Toads lack the ability to chew their food adequately, so they have evolved a work around to this problem, by using their eyes! Yes, that is correct, they use their eyes. Toads have large eyes, and after grabbing a tasty meal in the form of a beetle (for example), their eyes are specially adapted to press down into the mouth effectively pushing the insect from their sticky tongue and forcing it down the throat so it may be swallowed. Toads, like frogs do not drink water, instead hydration is achieved by soaking in available water. Toads have drier skin and are able to tolerate longer periods away form water, whereas their cousins the frogs have higher hydration needs to maintain their slimy secretions for respiration through their skin.

 

American toads have excellent eyesight and hearing, and it is believed they use their hearing to detect rains, from underground, which may signal the return of spring. Males emerge from hibernation first, and guided by an internal homing device they will migrate back to the area where they were conceived, often to the exact spot! It is believed they use the moon to navigate to their location of birth. This journey may be as little as a few hundred meters or as much as a few miles. Once males arrive to the breeding grounds, usually in April or early May, they begin calling in earnest to attract females which will appear on the landscape up to a week later. Females, using their acute hearing are able to distinguish her own kind among a chorus of many species of frogs and toads that may be sharing the same area. In fact frogs and toads are the only amphibians to utilize organized sound. They have distress calls, mating calls and calls to warn others of their kind that danger is nearby.

She will select the healthiest and most virile male to mate with based on the length and strength of his calling abilities. After mating, the female will lay up to 20,000 eggs in long strands often attached to plant matter within a pond, wetland, or other water source. Occasionally she will lay them along the bottom of a pond. In a few days the eggs will hatch into tiny black tadpoles. 

 

In about a month, seemingly all at once, hundreds or even thousands of toadlets will emerge from their watery homes. These aggregations of tiny toadlets often follow each other in unison along sandy shores of ponds, streams, and wetlands. Eventually they will shed their skins, and molt into a larger version of themselves. After multiple sheds they will reach their full adult size, typically by mid-summer. At this time, they will disperse into the landscape and set up a territory that typically ranges up to a half mile. Although in some cases this may be as much as a mile. American toads may live up to five years in the wild, with some reports claiming there are records of them living up to thirty years in captivity. Although I think these claims are exaggerated, as that would be an exceedingly long time for any amphibian to live.

Toads, along with frogs began appearing 200 million years ago, a full 30 million years before dinosaurs! For centuries they have fascinated humans, and are often the stuff of legends, and folklore. Pliny the elder referred to them as bramblefrogs, for their preferred life among the brambles and forests. Many misconceptions about toads come from their mythological association with witches. Toads were often considered familiars, or supernatural entities in the guise of a toad, that would assist witches in their practice of magic. These myths were fed by stories and legends with little basis in fact.

 

Even William Shakespeare in at least two of his works, MacBeth and As you Like It bespoke of the lowly toad.

 

 In Macbeth he waxed poetically: 

“Round the cauldron go;

In the poison’d entrails throw

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights has thirty-one

Swelter’d venom sleeping got

Boil thou first; the charmed pot”

 

In As You Like it Shakespeare had this eloquent prose to share:

"Sweet are the use of adversity

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Find tongues in trees, books in running brooks.

Sermons in stones, and good in everything

I would not change."

 

In Germany it was believed the toad took up his abode in the poisonous hemlock plant. The toad was said to suck the poison from the plant thus gaining his own available toxins. Germans even referred to the deadly nightshade plant as the toad flower. As you can see the unassuming, shy toad has had an ancestry steeped in mythology, misconceptions, and witchcraft. Perhaps no other animals is as underserving of his reputation as is the toad. These sour-faced amphibians provide insect and slug control, feed a hungry population of various animals and whether you are three or ninety-three are sure to delight us with their presence.