French Toads and Frogs

TOADS.

One of my favourites is the midwife toad. The charming little males carry their eggs around on their backs and can live for 20 years. If you know your birds he is one of the easiest to identify by his voice, just like the Scops Owl (an explosive, metallic, "poo" if you're not into owls.).

The one that sounds like a hen is probably a Spadefoot. A nasty little blighter, he will squeal, inflate and then jump at you with his mouth open if you annoy him.

Squeaky shoes, or the cork being pulled from a bottle will be the Parsley Frog (which is actually a toad). Looks like parsley, smells like garlic, and climbs up glass using his belly as a sucker.

A toad that rolls over to flash his yellow belly at you is, naturally, a Yellow-bellied Toad. He tastes nasty!

If it's not one of these, and its reaction to you is a sort of "head-down, bum-up" it will be either a Common Toad or a Natterjack. The common is the one everybody knows, and the Natterjack is the one that runs. The common toad is the only one that gets much bigger than a golf-ball, and southern females can be relatively buxom at a massive 15cm.

FROGS (excluding the Tree-Frogs)

Frogs are much more difficult to identify than toads - even the experts find frog identification a bit daunting. There are actually two brown species in South West France (the common and the agile) plus a third if you are in the North East of France (the moor frog). All the layman can usually do is call it a ‘brown frog’!

Now "green" frogs are much more interesting - just as difficult to identify - but with fascinating sex lives. We can start off by saying that there are three types (Marsh, Pool, and Edible), but that's much too easy. No-one actually seems to know how many types there are. Certainly Marsh Frogs are Marsh frogs, and Pool Frogs are Pool Frogs, but they interbreed. Surprise, surprise, their sprogs are not like their mummies or daddies but are something else entirely. These weirdos are called Edible Frogs.

And now the plot really begins to thicken. Female Edible Frogs can mate with either Marsh or Pool Frogs, and Edible Frogs can mate with one-another. Add the outcomes of these three matings to the original Marsh/Pool crosses and you have four different types of Edible Frog. They can only be identified by looking at their DNA .

All in all the French seem to have the best attitude to these taxonomic problems - they eat them!

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