Green Toad

• GeneralVery tolerant of salt and drought; its call is a long trill like a cricket's.
• It changes colour in response to heat and light far more than other toads do.
• Its glands produce bufotoxins as a defence.
• It is strictly protected by the Bern Convention and the Habitats Directive.
• It is among the amphibians most resistant to dryness and salt: it breeds in brackish waters that would kill other frogs and colonises quarries, spoil heaps and urban waste ground.
• The male's call is a long, musical trill, very like that of the mole cricket, heard on spring nights right in the middle of town.
• Its group is a striking case of polyploidy in vertebrates: within the green toad complex there are diploid, triploid and tetraploid species, something exceedingly rare outside fish and amphibians.
• Precisely for that reason the complex has been split into several species: what used to be called Bufo viridis is today a set of species spread across Europe, North Africa and Asia.
• It was credited with the ability to change colour, and indeed it adjusts its shade of green and brown according to substrate and temperature.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (amphibian)

Habitat & environment

Steppe, dunes, farmland and town gardens

Litter / clutch size

Females can lay between 9,000 and 15,000 eggs at a time

Sources consulted: IUCN Red List; Convenio de Berna (Apéndice II) y Directiva Hábitats (Anexo IV); Muntaner Yangüela 2004, en Atlas y Libro Rojo de los Anfibios y Reptiles de España; Monaco Nature Encyclopedia

Best time: From spring to autumn; it is nocturnal and unobtrusive during the day