Cane Toad

The cane toad is the largest true toad, a big, dry-skinned, warty toad, grey, yellowish, reddish-brown or olive-brown, with a cream belly that is often blotched. Prominent bony ridges run from above the eyes down the snout, and a large poison gland (parotoid) sits behind each eye. The pupils are horizontal with golden irises. Females are larger than males. Juveniles are smooth and dark, and the tadpoles are small and uniformly black (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is active by day and night (AmphiBIO, Oliveira et al. 2017) and eats almost anything it can catch, along with dead matter, which is unusual for a frog. Females lay thousands of eggs at once in strings of jelly up to 20m long in shallow water; tadpoles hatch within about two days, form schools, and take about four weeks to become toadlets. Eggs, tadpoles and adults are toxic to many predators, and its poison can kill dogs. Since 2016 populations west of the Andes have been treated as a separate species, Rhinella horribilis (Wikipedia, general species account; Barrio-Amorós et al. 2019).

Bolivia is within the cane toad's native range, which reaches south from Venezuela and Colombia to central Brazil and Bolivia (Barrio-Amorós et al. 2019). Unlike in Australia and the Pacific islands, where it was introduced to control cane beetles and became a serious pest, here it is a native part of the lowland fauna, often found around houses and gardens (Wikipedia, general species account).