Has anyone else seen this?

I came down into the animal room late last night, switched on the lights, and what did I see? Nothing particularly unusual for a room full of herps - one of them was shedding - but the interesting bit was it was our toad. Now I might be being a bit stupid here but I didn't know that amphibians shed, and despite having had our toad for 3-4 years, I have never ever seen him shed before. Do all frogs and toads shed? What about salamanders? How often do they do it? It was amazing to watch - he shed like a leopard gecko does, pulling it off in almost one piece and eating it as he went.

Skye

wow learn something new everyday. that I did not know

I know that some more exotic toads will bury themselves underground for periods of dry weather and coat themselves with a mucous that retains the moisture. When the wet season comes back around, they surface and shed their mucous layer to absorb more moisture. Now sure exatcly what animal does this, but IIRC, it's an african species of toad.

Just a thought....

BTW - what kind of toad it it?

I've seen local toads eating their sheds. Every time my great niece comes to town she catches a few toads out in the backyard and in a viv they go.

Wes, I've seen the local toads and frogs do the burying thing. I have a marshy area on my property and when it dries out there isn't any amphibians to be seen. After the rain comes again I have a bunch of holes appear and they are back.

Spadefoots do that (scaphiopus sp. check my spelliing on that though :crazy02: )

I think he's a Western toad (Bufo boreas).
This is a picture of his when he was not so old


but he's very interested in his food, and this is him nowadays...


Skye

Awww... he's cute.
DAND- must be fun having all those little guys around. All we have out here are lizards and rattlesnakes!

Skye?

Are you P. Baumann? If so, I'd like to say congrats on some really great closeup photographs, both here and on your web site. If not, well, P. does fine work, no matter who he or she is.

I have the very good fortune to be married to P. Baumann. He does take great pics, and I like to show them off. Unfortunately the days when we had time to work on a website for our animals are long gone, so our website is rather out of date, but I am glad you liked what you saw!
Thanks,
Skye

Your toad looks so sad.... I will tell him some of my jokes if you like..... (or is that a threat) he's beautiful though.

that toad is an eating machine - we call him Dumpy - we rescued him as a sweet little tadpole that was in a pond about to dry up when we lived in Colorado. We collected a whole bunch of tadpoles which, despite looking identical, turned out to be three different species of frogs and toads. We went back the next night to collect more and the pond had already dried. Anyway - all of them (as frogs and toads) got released back into suitable local environments except Dumpy who was smart enough to train us that when he went "SQUEEEEK" we would feed him, and so, once trained, we felt obliged to let him keep us. He moved to Kansas with us two years ago.
Skye

How long do they live? and what do they eat ? Fly's (I mean, do they eat flys, not can they.... :grin01: )

Oh my gosh, I think I moved to Toad Heaven here. The house is situated in the middle of a forest and not any real sizeable bodies of water around. But everywhere you walk, you see the grass hop with toads of all sizes. They live in the garage, in the polebarn, the dog house, under a dogbed in the polebarn..they're everywhere.

There's even one in the polebarn that if you do a wolf-whistle..it chirps and sounds like a wolf-whistle. I finally found it living in a catfood bowl under the workbench.

On a good night I can easily count 15-20 on our driveway eating up bugs attracted by the outside lights. It's amazing. They're such cute little critters. And they do such a good job cleaning up the bugs. We seem to have a pretty high population of roaches and ants around, so I'm sure that's the cause for the population boom in toads.

But it's damn hard to mow the yard when you drive 5 ft and have to wait for a toad to hop out of the way. =P

Where else can your dog's water bowl have tadpoles? I've been needing to dump it for a week because it's got skeeter larvae in it, but it's also got 50-70 tadpoles of unknown origin. I placed a pair of tree frogs that were locked in amplexus from our pool in there (opposite end of the house). So I'm guessing that's what they are. So I don't do much to the water. I add some cold when it gets hot..but that's it. =P

But I've witnessed toads eating their sheds before. I think thats why most people don't think they shed, because they never find the skins. I guess it's too nutritious to waste. Never know when the next belly-full of bugs will come along.

Tigerlilly: We have lots of toads out where we live. I had one that lived in my front yard and hibernated in a hole there each year. We also have little frogs that live near the creeks.