Few people love amphibians: it’s good if the frog or toad is simply bypassed, and often they try to harm the animal! Unmotivated aggression on the part of man can be explained only by his lack of proximity - it is strange to want to offend such an animal as an earthen toad, if you know at least a little about it.
Bad-standing Amphibian
Dislike of toads goes through generations. Even in the Middle Ages, these animals were treated with special contempt and fear. In all civilized countries, it was believed that touching a toad was a certain death. Moreover, the cause of death was supposedly the poison secreted by the toad through the skin.
Also, her cunning and danger to our ancestors was that a person could become a kind of incubator for them. They explained it this way: you can drink toad eggs with bad or untreated water, and already in the stomach they will hatch safely and begin active life activities. For a modern person, this sounds wild, but before this condition was very actively treated.
Science has proved that toad poses no danger to humans. Yes, in the case of an extreme situation for itself, the toad can release a special protective secret from the skin, but it performs, rather, a deterrent role and will not cause any harm.
Toad or frog: how to distinguish?
For many people, this is a fundamental question: who exactly did they meet, is the frog a toad? And although neither one nor the other carries danger, it is not difficult to distinguish between them.
- The toad has a larger size: an adult can reach 15 centimeters in length.
- The body of the toad is loose, the contours are not clearly defined. The head is rather low pressed to the ground.
- The skin can have a hue from earthy gray to dark green. It has a large number of warts, tubercles and glands.
- Toad, unlike a frog, cannot jump. She confidently goes to the goal.
Most often, people meet amphibians on vacation near ponds or in yards, where there is a constant source of moisture. So, an earthen toad usually feels great in the garden - this is where summer residents often meet her and are unreasonably scared.
Life and habits
Like other amphibians, toads hibernate during the temperature-lowering season. So that no one would disturb the process of waiting for heat, they burrow into the soil to a depth of 10 centimeters, hide under the rhizomes of trees and stumps and can even use abandoned burrows of rodents.
In the warm season, the activity of toads occurs at night. At this time, they go out in search of food: often on a summer evening you can meet a toad in places lit by lanterns.
Quite interesting is the answer to the question of how earthen toads reproduce. First of all, these animals cannot do this without water: it is in a pond that they spawn.
Caviar in toads has a special appearance - it resembles a long thin cord. Such cords are traced at the bottom of the pond or can be braided around algae. Sometimes the length of such cords reaches 5-8 meters!
Tadpoles that emerge from caviar do not appear on the surface at first. They live at the bottom, eating small algae and what remains of dying animals and plants. Tadpoles develop quite quickly, and after 50-60 days on land a full-fledged green or ground toad may appear.
Fear or help for the gardener?
What to do if you suddenly met an earthen toad in the garden or in the garden? Is it possible to touch it, will it spoil the crop? Or maybe he’ll bring friends and have nowhere to hide from toads?
In order to answer the question of what do toads do in a garden or garden, you need to find out what earthen toads eat.
The main food for them are insects. They do not disdain caterpillars, various millipedes, as well as snails. The toad cannot be scared by the bright colors or unusual appearance of the insect. Seeing the object for breakfast, the toad waddles toward its goal.
What is the benefit for the gardener? The most direct! Ground toad is a great organic way to control pests and crop eaters. She is such a nurse of crops for herself, who in the evenings goes around the entrusted territory.
Therefore, having met this amphibian on its way or in the garden, one does not need to become like medieval Europeans and run after the “anti-toad” antidote or pesticide. Do not hit the animal and do not stomp on it: give way, because it follows its important tasks, fulfilling its natural function. And a side effect of it is a benefit for a person.