Frogs House

Description

American Toads have short legs, stout bodies, and thick skins with noticeable warts. These warts can be colored red and yellow. The warty skin contains many glands that produce a poisonous milky fluid, providing these Toads with excellent protection from many of their predators. This poison is only harmful if it is swallowed or if it gets in the eyes, but it can make many animals very sick.

Anatomy

Toads have poison glands (called parotids) behind their eyes, a chubby body, and shorter legs than frogs. Toads have no teeth, and most Toads have warty skin. The largest Toads are over 8 inches (20 cm) long. Females are larger than males.

Life cycle

Like all amphibians, Toads must return to the water to lay their eggs. Toads eggs are laid in the water. When they hatch into tadpoles, they breathe with gills and swim using a tail. As they mature, they lose their tail, and they develop lungs for breathing air.

Habitat

Common Toads inhabit damp areas of deciduous woodland, scrub, gardens, parks and fields. In the breeding season, they live in ponds, lakes, ditches and slow-moving rivers.

Diet

Common Toads are opportunistic feeders, catching invertebrates such as insects, larvae, spiders, slugs and worms, on their sticky tongues. Larger Toads also prey on slow worms, small grass snakes and harvest mice, which are swallowed alive. Toads can sometimes be seen in the daytime following rainfall, but they are generally nocturnal, being most active on rainy nights.

Size

A male Toads is around 65 mm in length. The females are around 25mm longer. Sometimes larger Toads can be found, and these are usually females.

Toxicity

All stages of the Cane Toads’s life-cycle are poisonous. The venom produced by the parotoid glands acts principally on the heart. No humans have died in Australia from Cane Toads poison but overseas, people have died after eating Toads and even soup made from boiled Toads eggs. Cane Toads are also poisonous to pets and in Hawaii up to 50 dogs a year have died after mouthing Cane Toads. Signs of poisoning through ingestion include profuse salivation, twitching, vomiting, shallow breathing, and collapse of the hind limbs. Death may occur by cardiac arrest within 15 minutes.

Australian native fauna that have been killed by eating or mouthing Cane Toads include goannas, Freshwater Crocodile, Tiger Snake, Red-bellied Black Snake, Death Adder, Dingo and Western Quoll.

A Cane Toads responds to threat by turning side-on so its parotoid glands are directed towards the attacker. The venom usually oozes out of the glands, but Toads can squirt a fine spray for a short distance if they are handled roughly. The venom is absorbed through mucous membranes such as eyes, mouth and nose, and in humans may cause intense pain, temporary blindness and inflammation.

Description

The Spring Peeper Frog is a small frogs, attaining an adult size between 0.75 and 1.5 inches (up to 40mm) long. They have a dark cross on their backs roughly in the shape of an “X”, though sometimes the marking may be indistinct. The color variations of the Spring Peeper Frog are mostly tan, brown, olive green, and gray. Females are lighter-colored, while males are slightly smaller and usually have dark throats.

Diet

Peepers eat small insects, spiders, and worms, catching them with their long, sticky tongue.

Habitat

Found in temporary and permanent ponds, marshes, floodings, and ditches; after the breeding season they move into woodlands, old fields or shrubby areas; common throughout the Great Lakes region, except in the far north along northeastern Lake Superior.

Breeding

Late March into May

Coloring

Brown, tan or gray with dark slanting stripes on the back that usually form an X-shaped mark; the belly is white, yellowish or cream colored; this frogs has some color-changing ability and can darken or lighten, depending on its mood or the surroundings