page_title: Common toad
section_title: Behaviour
hierarchical_section_title: Common toad / Behaviour
caption_attribution_description: English: Common Toad (Bufo bufo), defensive reaction Polski: Ropucha szara
context_page_description: The common toad or European toad is an amphibian. They are found in most of Europe, except for Ireland, Iceland and some Mediterranean islands. The toad usually lies hidden during the day. It becomes active at dusk and spends the night hunting for the invertebrates on which it feeds. It moves with a slow ungainly walk or a short jump. It has a greyish brown skin covered with wart-like lumps.
  The toads in this genus are known as true toads. They have no teeth, a dry warty skin and horizontal pupils to the eyes.
context_section_description: The common toad usually moves by walking rather slowly or in short jumps using all four legs. It spends the day hiding.  It comes out at dusk.  It may travel some distance in the dark while hunting. It is most active in wet weather. By morning it has returned to its base.  It may live in the same place for several months. It has a large appetite and eats woodlice, slugs, beetles, caterpillars, flies, worms and even small mice. Small, fast moving prey may be caught by a flick of the tongue. Larger items are grabbed with the jaws. Having no teeth, it swallows food whole in a series of gulps. It will try to eat any small, dark coloured, moving object it encounters at night. A research study showed that it would snap at a moving 1 cm (0.4 in) piece of black paper as if it were prey. It would ignore a larger moving piece. On occasion, the common toad sheds its skin which comes away in tattered pieces. The skin is then eaten.
  When attacked, the common toad puffs up its body and stands with its back end raised and its head lowered. Its main means of defence is a foul tasting secretion. It has a bufotoxin called bufagin and is enough to keep away many predators. Grass snakes seem to be unaffected by it. Other predators of adult toads include hedgehogs, rats and mink, and even domestic cats. Birds that feed on toads include herons, crows and birds of prey. The tadpoles also have noxious substances which keep fishes from eating them but not the great crested newt. Aquatic invertebrates that feed on toad tadpoles include dragonfly larvae, diving beetles and water boatmen. These usually avoid the noxious secretion by puncturing the tadpole's skin and sucking out its juices.
  A parasitic fly, Lucilia bufonivora, attacks adult common toads. It lays its eggs on the toad's skin. When these hatch, the larvae crawl into the toad's nostrils and eat its flesh.
caption: A common toad adopting a defensive stance
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