Green Toad

The green toad is so named because it can adapt its coloration to the environment. However, because their skin is usually mottled green, they are also called green toads.

Characteristics

What do green toads look like?

The green toad is a small toad. It belongs to the real toads and thus to the amphibians; these are amphibians – i.e. creatures that live both on land and in water.

The skin of the green toad is covered with warty glands.

By the way, this is the case with all toads. The warts are one of the distinguishing features of toads and frogs.

Green toads are light gray to tan in color and have a distinctive dark green spotted pattern, sometimes interspersed with red warts.

They are mottled dark gray on the underside. However, you can adjust their color to match the environment.

Females grow up to nine centimeters, males up to eight centimeters.

The males also have a sound sac on their throat and bulges on the inside of their first three fingers during mating season.

Their pupils are horizontal and elliptical – a typical feature of toads.

Although green toads live on land, they have webbed toes.

Where do green toads live?

Green toads come from the steppes of Central Asia. The western border of Germany is also roughly the western limit of the range of green toads, and so they are found today from Germany to Central Asia. However, they also live in Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands, and North Africa.

Green toads like dry, warm habitats.

They are usually found in the lowlands on sandy soils, in gravel pits or on the edges of fields and on railway embankments, or in vineyards.

It is important that they find places where the sun shines and bodies of water in which they can lay their spawn.

What types of green toads are there?

We still have the common toad, the spadefoot toad, and the natterjack toad. The green toad is easily recognized by its coloration. There are different breeds of green toads depending on their distribution area.

How old do green toads get?

Green toads live up to nine years.

Behave

How do green toads live?

Green toads are nocturnal animals that come out of their hiding places when it is dark to look for food. Only in the spring and when it rains are they lively during the day.

In the cold season, they hibernate, which usually lasts a little longer than other amphibians.

Green toads often share their habitat with natterjack toads. These are olive-brown in color and have a fine light yellow stripe on their backs.

It is then that green toads mate with natterjack toads, and because they are so closely related, this results in viable hybrids of both species.

Green toads show strange behavior: they often remain in one place for many years, but then suddenly migrate up to a kilometer in one night to look for a new home.

Today, these migrations are dangerous for the toads, as they often have to crossroads and can hardly find suitable habitats.

Friends and foes of green toads

Birds such as storks, kites, and tawny owls prey on green toads. The tadpoles fall victim to dragonflies and water beetles, young toads to starlings and ducks.

To ward off enemies, the adult green toads release a white, unpleasant-smelling secretion from their skin glands. The tadpoles can only escape their enemies by diving to the bottom of the water.

How do green toads reproduce?

The mating season of green toads begins at the end of April and ends around June or July.

During this time, the males live in the water and attract the females with their trilling courtship calls. After mating, each female lays about 10,000 to 12,0000 eggs

They lay this so-called spawn in long, jelly-like twin cords about two to four meters long. After ten to 16 days, the larvae hatch from the eggs.

They look like tadpoles and are gray above and whitish below. They usually swim individually and not in swarms.

Like frog tadpoles, they have to go through a process of transformation, metamorphosis. They switch their breathing from gill breathing to lung breathing and develop front and hind legs.

Within two to three months they turn into young toads and crawl ashore around July.

Young green toads are about 1.5 centimeters long. At the age of two to four years – after the third hibernation – they become sexually mature.

How do green toads communicate?

The call of the green toad is deceptively reminiscent of the chirping of the mole cricket: it is a melodious trill. It can usually be heard four times a minute.