Episode 59: American Toad – Voice of the Wild

This is Brodie with Illinois Extension and I’m here with a new “voice of the wild”

Some songs have surprising singers. You might think this musical trill should belong to a rare bush cricket, or maybe some diminutive, colorful, treetop frog, but the singer is far more down-to-earth than that. In fact, they are quite common – able to live much further away from the shorelines and ponds that house most amphibians; its a habitat flexibility afforded to them by their thick, bumpy skin. This is the american toad.

While the american toad’s thick skin gives them some leeway, they are still bound to water; that’s where they must lay their long strands of eggs. And about those bumps- while commonly referred to as warts, they are just skin glands and are certainly not transmissible, that’s just an old myth. Here’s the american toad again

Thank you to the Macaulay library at the Cornell lab for today’s sound. Learn more about voice of the wild at go.illinois.edu/VOW