Common toad
Bufo bufo
— Where the name comes from
Bufo is the Latin name of the toad, perhaps Etruscan in origin or at any rate pre-Indo-European: a word so old it has no recognisable relatives. The Italian rospo comes instead from the late Latin ruspus, “rough”.
— Facts
- Group
- Amphibians · Amphibia
- Order
- Frogs and toads
- Habitat
- Woodland, gardens, farmland; it returns to water only to breed
- Range
- Europe, western Asia, North Africa
- Size
- 8–15 cm, the female larger
- Diet
- Insectivore — slugs, beetles, earthworms
- Lifespan
- 10–12 years
— Characteristics
- 01
Warty, dry skin, suited to life out of the water.
- 02
It walks more than it hops.
- 03
The parotoid glands secrete bufotoxins.
— What sets it apart
Every spring toads migrate en masse to the pond where they were born, always the same one, crossing roads built there in the meantime. All over Europe there are now teams of volunteers who collect them in buckets at nightfall and carry them to the other side of the tarmac. It is one of the few animal migrations in which the survival of the population depends, quite literally, on somebody getting up at night.
