A walk along the forest path around the lake is an ideal place where you will meet an amphibian. After a long walk, I sat down on the ground and put my hands into the fallen beech leaves, and suddenly a toad found itself in my hands. It is obvious that I decided to rest next to her hiding place. This interesting animal, due to its appearance, specificity and characteristics, has always been interesting and attracted attention. It was used in various magical rituals, and was the main or secondary actor in various stories and fairy tales, while the ingredients of its glands are very interesting to lovers of hallucinogenic drugs. Reasons enough to deserve a story.
Here are some basic features. Unlike other frogs, toads do not jump, do not croak, and do not live in water. They are the biggest frogs in Europe. Their color and size vary, depending on their age, half of the environment in which they live. It does not hunt prey, but patiently waits for it, and eats as much as it weighs per day. It grows throughout its life, so it changes its skin, which it also eats.
Toads are terrestrial animals, they enter the water only during mating season. They are active at night, while during the day they have their hiding places, like this toad of mine. Females are larger than males and larger ones are more attractive. It happens that several male toads jump on a female so that during the act of love they can even die. A toad lays up to 12,000 eggs, but few of them reach sexual maturity and become adults that will have offspring, although they do not have many natural enemies.
The reason why toads do not have many natural enemies lies in their poison glands. Here in Serbia, for example, it was believed that if you touch a toad, you will get warts or scabs. This of course is not true because their glands secrete a liquid that has a large number of bactericides and fungicides because if it wasn't like that, bearing in mind that they spend time in the water, the toads would get moldy.
The toad's glands also secrete bufotenine, which if ingested causes hallucinations of disembodied flight. It is 5 times stronger than LSD. That's why it's no wonder that I've come across texts before where the liquid is drained from the glands of these frogs or even that drug addicts lick them.
But this is nothing new. All sorcery and witchcraft during the Middle Ages and later were based on frog poison, which was also used in voodoo magic. You are probably familiar with the scene of the witches cook the frogs. Leonardo da Vinci also wrote about magical potions whose ingredients contain substances from the glands of frogs. And bufotenin was used for magical purposes even in the 20th century throughout Europe. I believe that is still the case today in some rural areas.
There was even a belief that frogs are enchanted human beings, who carry a valuable jewel in their head, and that's why they were killed.
A few years ago, about 1,500 toads were seized in Peru from a van, which would have been used for various aphrodisiacs.
Bearing in mind the above, it can be concluded that we have not moved far from the Middle Ages and that frogs were killed both then and in the 21st century for more or less similar reasons.
After everything I've written, I can't get rid of the impression that humans are the real torturers of frogs, even though they've been on this planet much longer than us, they lived at the time of the dinosaurs. We cook them, squeeze them, dissect them, lick them, and destroy and dry out their habitats, which has had the effect of reducing their population a lot.
After photographing my wood toad (lat. Bufo Bufo), I put it back where I found it and covered it with leaves. She was very calm and I had the impression that she didn't want to run away.
Be safe dear toad!
In this text, I found information about toads here,here and here
