Southern Toad

by AnnaJo Vahle

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Price

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Dimensions

14.000 x 11.000 x 1.000 inches

Title

Southern Toad

Artist

AnnaJo Vahle

Medium

Painting - Acrylic On Canvas

Description

This is an acrylic painting on a stretched canvas. The canvas is 11 inches tall and 14 inches wide. I based this painting on a photograph I took with my Iphone. We saw this little guy sitting on the sidewalk in front of a grocery store in Melbourne, Florida. He allowed me to put the phone right up to him...almost touching him. I totally changed his surroundings because the concrete sidewalk wasn't very interesting. Instead, I imagined him in my yard.

I have bunches of this little toads in my back yard on Merritt Island, Florida. They create a loud cacophony of croaking on rainy nights. It is amazing how loud they can be! It is difficult to sleep sometimes!

The Southern Toad (classified by scientists as Bufo terrestris) is about 3 inches in length. It has a knobby head and bumps between the eyes. The Southern toad is usually reddish brown in color with large warts behind the eyes. Some toads will have dark brown or black spots on the back. The Southern toad has glands on either side of its neck that hold a thick, white poison meant to harm or kill any predators.

Southern toads live in areas with loose soil where they can easily burrow in the ground. They are found throughout the southern USA in moderately warm, open areas near a water source. During the day, Southerns will stay in their burrows but they are often seen at night when it feeds on insects, spiders, and other small bugs that are attracted to light sources. It is also at night when the call of the toad is best heard. Males make a croaking noise as they enter water or feed. These animals do not mind being near people; they seem to prefer the lights of suburbs to help attract insects to eat.

A female Southern will lay up to 3,000 eggs in the warm summer months in shallow pools of standing water after heavy rains. They also prefer flooded meadows. Eggs usually hatch within a few days, but the tadpoles take up to 2 months to develop into young Southern toads.

Uploaded

February 17th, 2020

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