Frogs and Toads

Toads have dry and pebbly skin, and frogs have moist and smooth skin. Frogs like water and toads prefer land.

Toads and frogs lay their eggs in water, because their babies start off as tadpoles. The difference is that frog eggs are laid in bunches or clusters, and they have a jelly-like substance around them. Toads lay their eggs in lines or strands, on leaves of plants that live in the water. A baby toad is a tadpole or toadlet

Frogs have slim bodies and long legs, and jump to get around. Toads have short forelimbs and hop or walk. Toads have big glands behind their eyes, called paratoid glands, which produce poison.

There are three names for baby frogs, depending on which segment of the life cycle they are in. After 21 days of being an embryo, a baby frog is called a polliwog and at this point, has a long tail and lives in the water. It becomes a tadpole when it sprouts legs. As a froglet, it has almost matured into a full-grown adult that breathes with lungs, but still has a bit of a tail. The sequence is polliwog, tadpole, froglet.

Frogs don’t actually drink water with their mouths; they drink it through their skin. A frog’s skin absorbs water when it is in the water so its body gets all of the hydration that it needs that way.

True toads do not have teeth and the skin on the head is typically ossified to the skull. Toad’s skin lets out a bitter taste and smell that burns the eyes and nostrils of its predators, much like a skunk does. True toads belong to the family Bufonidae, which consists of 50 genera and nearly 600 species, native to all continents except Antarctica and Australia. Toads belong to the order Anura, and are actually a subset of frogs. In popular use, toad seems to be used to refer to any frog that has a dry warty skin and short legs.

Frogs:
 Need to live near water
 Have smooth, moist skin that makes them look “slimy”.
 Have a narrow body
 Have higher, rounder, bulgier eyes
 Have longer hind legs
 Take long high jumps
 Have many predators
 Hibernate in the winter.

Toads:
 Do not need to live near water to survive
 Have rough, dry, bumpy skin
 Have a wider body
 Have lower, football shaped eyes
 Have shorter, less powerful hind legs
 Do not have many predators
 Will run or take small hops rather than jump.

Bottom line, all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads and neither frogs nor toads will give you warts.

Frogs

The name frog comes from the Old-English 'frogga', which means, to jump. There are over 5,000 varieties of frogs.

* From a taxonomic perspective, all members of Anura are frogs, but only members of the family Bufonidae are considered toads. Frog usually refers to species that are aquatic or semi-aquatic with smooth and/or moist skins, and the term 'toad' generally refers to species that tend to be terrestrial with dry, warty skin. 

*  A group of adult frogs is referred to as an Army of frogs and also a colony or a knot.

* Frogs legs are considered a delicacy in China, Greece, New Orleans, and France. 

* Frogs will only eat something that moves; in nature that would be insects or spiders. Tadpoles are vegetarian.

* Amphibians, such as frogs, always return to water to breed.     However, there is a midwife frog where the male carries the frogspawn around on his body.  When he senses the time is ripe, he swims out into the water and the tiny tadpoles emerge from their egg-jelly and swim away.

* Frogs, can change their color to suit their background; not as spectacularly as chameleons, but enough to save them from a casual predator.

* Ranidaphobia means fear of frogs. Touching frogs will not give you warts, that's just a myth.