Toads

Question
Hi
My son has recently bought a house and inherited a pond with it, there are some lovely fish, some quite large, about 14" long but all I think just goldfish.  Today I noticed a mass of spawn and then seeing a toad assumed it was probably toad spawn.  The toad was on the top of the pond and was actually latched on to a fish with its front legs, the back ones being sprawled out probably giving it a overall width of about 8 or 9 inches. We lifted the toad and fish in a net and saw it had claws which it was using to hold the fish tightly, the fish was barely alive.  It did eventually release the fish and we let them both go back into thepond.  It was really large and very fat and flat in appearance.  I would like to know if you are able to advise what type of toad this may be and has it attacked the fish.  I would prefer to keep both the fish and toad if possible but don't want it to kill the lovely fish in the pond.  Can you help?

Answer
I can't tell you for sure what creature you have there.  Here is a list of features that may help you identify it:

Frogs are slimy, toads are rough

Frogs' eyes are more centered on the top of the head, and not the sides.

Frogs leap, toads run or take little hops.

Just by the fact that you described him as fat %26 flat makes me lean more toward it being a toad.


If it IS a toad, he is less reliant on the water than a frog would be, so he may eventually leave anyway.  Toads will eat mosquitos while leaving plants alone, so there is at least a benefit of him being there.  I don't know, so I'll just call him a frog.

This is one of those rare pond occurrences that you only ever hear about once or twice.  Believe it or not, the general belief is that the frog is trying to...well...do something very inappropriate to your fish.  Frogs are simple minded creatures and once they think they've got what they want, they usually fail to reassess the situation.  In other words, that dumb frog never made the connection that what he's on top of isn't a lady frog.

It's the time of the season, and after a month or so you may never see this happen again.