This is part of an ongoing series, Species of the Week, and is cross-posted as Biodiversions at The Clade.
The garden is in now, so it’s time to get back to working on my ethnographic memoir on living as a family member and anthropologist in Nepal. I’m currently revising the chapter where I describe an encounter with an enormous hibernating toad. My six-year old son and his Nepali uncle and cousin almost hoed it in half as they weeded around a lemon tree. My son called me from my academic writing to see it. I picked the sluggish toad out of its burrow and prodded it to hop off to a safer spot. Then I decided to pitch in to help prepare a vegetable garden and discovered a passion for growing food (and a lack of passion for academia) that continues to this day.
- Common Indian Toad. Credit: Toadily Toads (available from Wikimedia Commons)
Over the last sixteen years, that toad has been most important to me as a symbol of a life-changing moment. Because of their dramatic metamorphosis from tadpole to adult, toads and frogs often represent transformational moments in various mythologies and belief systems around the world.
Dwelling on the toad as a keystone in my personal mythology, I haven’t until now tried to figure out much about the species. I remember it as large, rough skinned, and the color of soil. My best guess is that it was the most common toad in South Asia: Duttaphrynus melanostictus (or Bufo melanostictus), the Common Indian Toad (also known as the Common Asian/Asiatic Toad or Black-Spined Toad).
The Common Indian Toad belongs to the family of true toads, Bufonidae. Distinguishing characteristics of the family include lack of teeth, wartiness, and a pair of parotoid glands behind the eyes that secrete toxins. Some species, like the Cane Toad, are highly poisonous. Others secrete psychoactive chemicals valued by recreational drug users (perhaps another reason for being associated with life changes). I haven’t been able to find out much on what the Common Indian Toad puts out. I didn’t lick or kiss it, but perhaps something slipped through the skin on my fingers to rearrange my brain a bit. More likely, however, I was long overdue for a new direction in life. If it hadn’t been a toad, it would have been something else.
Unlike some other Bufonidae threatened with extinction, the Common Indian Toad appears to be doing relatively well. They’re common in drainage ditches in rural and urban areas throughout the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia. They often come out at night to feed on insects swarming under streetlamps.
The Common Indian Toad breeds during the monsoons, which in Nepal come between June and September. Male toads possess a Bidder’s organ, which after castration or exposure to certain chemicals, can develop into an ovary –- yet another reason to respect the toad’s potency as a symbol of change and an intriguing twist to add to the tale of what a princess gets after kissing one.
My encounter with the Common Indian Toad didn’t bring me a prince — or a princess — but it did invite me to live my life closer to the soil and to leave behind the toadiness of ivory towers.
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That’s very informative. I never think toads and frogs “represent transformational moments in various mythologies and belief systems”. It’s more associated with the prince fairy tale.