Toads: Amphibians surprise biologists by climbing trees

Citizen surveys have revealed that frequent toads usually climb bushes to cover in hollows or in nest containers

By Michael Le Page

The frequent toad is a moderately rotund animal with quick legs and an ungainly gait. It actually doesn’t appear like an excellent tree climber – but citizen surveys counsel that frequent toads usually climb bushes to cover in hollows and nest containers.

“It’s quite extraordinary,” says Silviu Petrovan on the University of Cambridge. “The people who do surveying for bats were like, ‘Oh yeah, we do find toads from time to time’. But nobody working with toads knows this.”

The discovering emerged from a dormouse monitoring …