Colours of Wildlife: African Red Toad
Created | Updated May 15, 2013
African Red Toad
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
The African Red Toad, Schismaderma carens, is another species I know well. It is fairly common in the environs of Polokwane, sometimes entering suburban gardens and even houses. It is a distinctive toad. It is not as bright red as some other tropical toads or frogs, but its brick-red colouring is quite unique in the region … IF present! The toads are sometimes brownish or even greenish, with just a faint trace of red. However, whatever its colour scheme, it always has a pair of small, side-by-side dark spots in the lower back region, which you cant see in this painting because of the angle. What is more distinctive is that its back colour is uniform apart from these small spots. All other toads in the region have lots of spots or blotches on their backs. Furthermore the red toad is relatively smooth, its ‘warts not standing out nearly as much as those of other local toads. In most other toads there are also two plainly visible bumps behind the eyes, the parotid glands. The red toad doesnt have these. But there is a glandular ridge running from behind its eyes along its sides to its rear legs. It can also be recognized by its shape, having a short bulldog-like face and a rather flat back. It is a medium-sized toad, reaching about 9 cm/3.6” in snout-to-vent length (excluding legs).
Red toads are very widespread, occurring from Kenya in East Africa down to central and southern Africa. They inhabit savannah or grassland country. Adult toads hunt insects at night, sheltering in cavities in trees and logs during the daytime to keep them from drying out. Theyve adapted well to the presence of humans, enjoying the shelter and relative humidity to be found in gardens, and will hide in cracks in walls or even inside houses by day. Here you see a photo of one on the carpet of my house! I take these toads outside if I find them indoors since I dont want the cat to be playing with them, for their sakes and hers.
For breeding, red toads need fairly substantial bodies of water, but have again benefited from human-created lakes, pools and ponds. Red toads have incredibly deep voices, their call being a long, low, ‘whooooom, somewhat resembling a bellowing bull. Males inflate themselves enormously, their vocal sacs not being restricted to their throats as in other toads, but also encompassing their chest and arm regions, and call while floating in open water. They pass the air from their throat sacs into their bellies and back again while calling, and in the process they tip forward and backward while they float. They breed during the day, while many other frogs and toads call and breed by night.
The red toad males can crowd a particular body of water, often being within 30 cm/12” of each other. The females will enter the mating area and the males will then boom competitively to intimidate each other, and will also chase each other around in the water, while trying to grab onto the females in the frog mating style called amplexus. The male has warty growths on his hands to help him clasp firmly onto the female, with his arms under her armpits. She will lay a long string of eggs and the male will fertilize them as they emerge. A single female lays about 2500 eggs. Red toad tadpoles have strange, horseshoe-like flaps on their heads, and swarm together in large clumps the size of a soccer ball. They often share the same bodies of water with tadpoles of other species such as the African Giant Bullfrog. These tadpoles are preyed upon by everything from dragonfly nymphs to terrapins and hamerkops. But because there are so many, at least some survive and metamorphose into toadlets.
Adult red toads are also eaten by a variety of predators, despite their noxious skin secretions. Nevertheless they are quite successful and common where they occur. This toad species is different enough from all other toads to be given its own genus, Schismaderma which means ‘split skin, referring to the way its skin splits when it molts, and its species name carens means ‘lacking, referring to its lacking the prominent parotid glands seen in other toads. It has been evolving separately from other toads for a period of perhaps 55 million years!
