Pictures of toads...

CLASS: Amphibia ORDER: Anura FAMILY: Bufonidae GENUS: Bufo

Copyright notice: All photos on these pages are COPYRIGHT JOHN WILKINSON. If you wish to use any of these photos for publication, whether in print or in a web page, please contact me. The fee for using any of these photos in a publication or a website without prior arrangement is £250 (= US$ 400) per photo. Unauthorised usage of any photos from these pages constitutes agreement to these terms.

A typically-coloured male European toad (Bufo bufo) floats patiently amongst the duckweed in a spring pond – he is awaiting the arrival of the females (which are often fashionably late!). The personal habits of toads are not always so relaxed, however, as you will see below!

European toads tend to have orange eyes.

This green toad (Bufo viridis) was photographed in a field near Turin, north Italy, on a warm, rainy night. The green toad is perhaps the most variable toad in Europe and animals from different parts of its large range (North Africa and through Europe into Asia) can look quite different. Italian green toads are probably the prettiest!

A female Mauretanian toad, (Bufo mauretanicus), photographed in Tunisia, North Africa. (The background is the linen on my hotel bed – the staff must have thought I was barking...)

This is Bufo proboscideus, a forest-dwelling toad (with a long nose) from the rainforests of Brazil. This one was found in Reserva Ducke, a marvellous reserve near the city of Manaus in the central Amazon.

A pair of European toads in amplexus (i.e. mating) in an artificial pond in Milton Keynes. Two strings of toadspawn are visible in the lower left of the picture. The spawn is wound around aquatic plants and submerged grasses.

Toad sex can sometimes get a little, er, complicated! This photo shows about eight males vying for the attention of just one female (she’s in there somewhere). This phenomenon (known as a mating ball, as opposed to a singles disco) is not uncommon and can involve many more toads than this!

NOT really a toad, but like one (as many amphibians are) is this Eleutherodactylus nigrogriseus which I found under a bit of wood on the lower slopes of the Andes, near Cuenca, Ecuador. Eleutherodactylus species belong to the family Leptodactylidae.