Question

The scientific name of common toad is
A) Hyla arboreal
B) Xenopus laevis
C) Bufo bufo
D) Bombinator igneus

Answer 1

Hint: The common toad is a gardener's mate, sucking up slugs and snails, despite its warts and ancient associations with witches. It is renowned for migrating to its breeding.

Complete Answer:
The common toad's scientific name is Bufo bufo. In the western part of North Asia, the common toad is an amphibian found throughout most of Europe. It is one of a group of animals descended from a single ancestral line of toads that are closely related.

Popular toads are amphibians, which during the spring breed in ponds and spend most of the rest of the year feeding in trees, gardens, heaths and tussocky grasslands.

Common toads prefer to breed in deeper, larger ponds than common frogs, but gardens are still frequent. Over winter, they hibernate, often under log piles, stones or even in old pots of flowers. Olive-brown, warty skin, copper eyes and short back legs are present in the common toad. It walks rather than hops, and with two rows of eggs per line, lays its spawn in long strings around aquatic plants.

Common toads live in a wide variety of environments, but typically they are found in damp areas. You will always find them in the same place, time after time, as creatures of habit, but since they can blend in with their surroundings and stay motionless for hours at a time, they can be hard to identify.

Popular Toads eat invertebrates that they capture on their sticky, prehensile tongues, such as insects, larvae, spiders, slugs and worms. Slow worms, small grass snakes and harvest mice, which are eaten alive, can also be taken by larger toads. Toads usually hunt at night and in rainy weather, are most successful.

The correct Answer is option (C) Bufo bufo.

Note: Deeper water sources in which to breed are favoured by common toads. Like adults, tadpoles contain toxins in their skin making them unpleasant to fish, enabling them to live in fish ponds, where they will consume other amphibian larvae, particularly those of newts. Toads have a powerful migratory instinct, each spring taking the same path back to their ancestral breeding ponds. This adds to the distinctive mass of 'toad crossings' that can unfortunately lead to major road deaths.