American toad along McKeon Reserve trail in Springvale
Photo: Kevin McKeon
Learn to Love American Toads – Warts and All
By Kevin McKeon, Maine Master Naturalist
Iroquois legend has the pregnant goddess Sky Woman falling to a water-covered Earth, pushed from her paradise island home in the sky by a mad husband. Animals and birds lived in the waters. Two birds saw her falling, caught her, and brought her to the other animals safely cradled upon their backs. To save Sky Woman, the animals — one by one — dived into the waters to find mud with which they would build land, but they all failed. Finally, Little Toad surfaced with a mouthful of mud, and the animals spread it on the back of Big Turtle, creating land on Earth — a home for Sky Woman. The goddess gave birth to twin gods: Sapling, a good god; and Flint, a bad one. After Flint destroyed everything good that Sapling made, Sapling defeated Flint, and exiled him, powerless, to Big Turtle’s back. Flint’s rage would rise, erupting as lava from volcanoes. So, it was Little Toad that helped create land on Earth, and one of the many reasons toads are revered by some cultures as symbols of transformation and rebirth, and as connections to underworlds.
Toads and frogs are both amphibians, having an aquatic, gill-breathing nymphal life stage and a terrestrial, lung-breathing stage. Both belong to the taxonomic order Anura — “without tail.” The American toad, Anaxyrus americanus, is the only toad in Maine, but there are 24 species of “true toads” — those belonging to the taxonomic family Bufonidae — in the U.S. It’s become quite common to label frogs with warty skin as toads, so some listings have as many as 6,500 species of toads worldwide, but the species belonging to Bufonidae number closer to 500. A 2019 study of fossil records from the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona date the toad’s ancestors to about 215 million years ago, making them survivors of the dinosaur extinction event of 66 million years ago.
All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. General differences are: Toads have warty, dry skin and frogs have smooth, wet skin; toads’ back legs are short and stubby, used for crawling and walking, while frogs have long legs used for jumping and hopping; toads’ noses are rather flat and frogs’ are more pointed-looking; and toads have a stubby body shape, while frogs are more streamlined. Both produce toxins on their skins but are generally harmless to human touch — and they don’t cause warts! But eating these guys can be harmful, and washing before handling protects their sensitive skin from us and washing after handling is advised to keep the toxins from eyes and other sensitive body areas.
American toads need a water source in which to breed and for their early, aquatic nymphal stage; otherwise, they’ll live nearby, spending their life within an acre-sized habitat, eating insects, worms, slugs, and other small creatures of grasslands and forest edges. A toad’s rapid-fire tongue has evolved to quickly snag its prey, but not so much to move the food around. Smaller snacks can be swallowed, but by blinking its eyes, the toad’s eyeballs are forced back into its skull, creating pressure behind the food and forcing the meal down the digestive tract. With larger prey, several blinks are often needed to complete this operation.
A toad lays claim to a rotting log, and all of its bugs, in the McKeon Reserve, Springvale.
Photo: Kevin McKeon
Usually nocturnal, toads will emerge during rains to dine on surfacing worms. Daylight often finds them under some sort of cover: under boardwalks, porches, logs, wood piles, stones, or other cover. These critters, like some other amphibians, are chameleon-like — able to adjust their coloration to blend with their background environment.
American toads reach maturity in about three years and may reach 10 years in the wild. In captivity, a large (5.5=inch) female lived to her late 30’s. (A common toad, Bufo bufo, native to England, is estimated to have lived over 50 years in captivity.). Toads can remain active year-round, but when temperatures remain under 65º or so, they’ll enter a hibernative state called brumation, burrowing below the frost line into soft soil, under stumps, logs, or rocks, and will use vacated mammal burrows. If they get too cold, they’ll awaken and burrow deeper.
Toads face many survival challenges. Decreased snow cover — becoming the new norm due to global warming — can cause heavy freezing casualties to overwintering toads. And although they secrete foul scents and toxins to deter predation, many critters feed on toads: Snakes, skunks, raccoon, fox, coyote, rats, — just about any meat-eater. Interestingly, garter snakes especially are immune to their toxins and will build up a toxicity of their own in their livers, rendering garters toxic to eat. Toads’ sensitive skin is easily damaged by garden fertilizers and pesticides, gravely affecting breathing and water absorption capabilities — often causing mortality. Loss of wetland breeding sites and roadkill are other large threats to a toad population.
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