Common toad

Where does the common toad live?

Home: Woods, gardens and fields near still water.

In the wild it lives in these countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy, Sweden.

Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.

The short profile

Fully grown: about 8 to 13 cm long. It weighs about 0.05 kilograms. On the menu: insects.

The story behind it

A common toad walks rather than hops, picking its way slowly through grass and leaf litter. It hunts at night, sitting still until a slug, a woodlouse, a beetle or an earthworm comes close, then flicking out its sticky tongue; it has no teeth and swallows the meal whole. Behind each eye sits a raised gland that oozes a bitter, mildly poisonous liquid, which is why most animals let a toad go after one taste. In winter it hides under logs, in leaf piles or in a hole in the ground and waits out the cold. On the first mild, damp nights of spring, thousands of toads set off at once towards the pond where they were born, sometimes walking more than a kilometre. The male rides on the female's back, and she lays her eggs in long double strings that she winds around water plants. One string can hold several thousand eggs and stretch for metres. In many countries volunteers put up low fences along roads in spring and carry the toads across in buckets.

Find it on the globe

Common toad is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.