Facts
- Toads and frogs are amphibians—a class of vertebrate animals that also includes salamanders and the tropical caecilians, which are long, slender, wormlike and legless.
- Missouri has 26 species and subspecies (or geographic races) of toads and frogs.
- Toads and frogs differ from salamanders by having relatively short bodies and lacking tails at adulthood.
- Being an amphibian means that they live two lives: an aquatic larval or tadpole stage and a semi-aquatic or terrestrial adult stage.
- Of the 6,145 species of amphibians currently recognized in the world, there are approximately 4,145 species of toads and frogs.
- The largest species is the Goliath frog, Conrauad goliath, of the west coast of Africa, which may have a head-body length of nearly 14 inches and may weigh as much as 7 pounds.
- One of the world’s smallest frogs is Eleutherodactylus iberia, which has no common name and lives in the tropical forests of Cuba. It is less than a half-inch long as an adult. This frog is so tiny that females of the species are able to produce only one egg during the breeding season.
What are the differences between toads and frogs?
Even though they are more similar than different, there are some basic physical distinctions.
Freshly laid egg string of the American toad
Freshly laid egg mass of the wood frog
Toads
- dry, warty skin
- no teeth
- shorter hind legs than most frogs
- hop or crawl
- lay eggs in long, parallel strings
Frogs
- smooth, wet skin
- tiny teeth on both upper and lower jaws
- jump or leap
- lay eggs singly, in small clumps, in large masses, or as a film of eggs on the water surface
Toad and Frog Calls
With practice, people can learn to identify a variety of toads and frogs by the sounds they make. A male toad or frog produces his call by a rapid back-and-forth movement of air over his vocal cords. When calling, a toad or frog will close its mouth and nasal openings and force air from its lungs over the vocal cords into the mouth cavity, then back over the vocal cord and into the lungs. Producing a sound in this “closed system” enables some toads and frogs enlarged throat or expandable vocal sac to resonate their calls.
