Bufo

Appearance

True toads have in common stocky figures and short legs, which make them relatively poor jumpers. Their dry skin is thick and "warty".

Behind their eyes, ''Bufo'' species have wart-like structures, the parotoid glands. These glands distinguish the true toads from all other tailless amphibians. They secrete a fatty, white poisonous substance which acts as a deterrent to predators. Contrary to folk belief, handling toads does not cause warts, however due to the poison they secrete, and bacteria on their skins, a person should wash their hands thoroughly after handling one. The poison of most if not all toads contains bufotoxin.

Naming

Formerly, the genus ''Bufo'' encompassed many species and was divided into several subgenera. Frost et al. removed most of the species of former ''Bufo'' to other genera and restricted the name ''Bufo'' to members of the ''Bufo bufo'' group of earlier authors. Now, this genus has been reduced to seventeen extant species:

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!style="width: 60%; "| Binomial name and author!!style="width: 40%; "|Common name
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| ''Bufo ailaoanus'' Kou, 1984 || Ejia toad, Ailao toad
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| ''Bufo aspinius'' ||
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| ''Bufo bankorensis'' Barbour, 1908 || Central Formosa toad, Bankor toad
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| ''Bufo bufo'' || Common toad, European toad
|-style="background:#FFFDFF;"
| ''Bufo cryptotympanicus'' Liu & Hu, 1962 || Earless toad
|-style="background:#EEEEEE;"
| ''Bufo eichwaldi'' Litvinchuk, Borkin, Skorinov, and Rosanov, 2008 || Eichwald's toad
|-style="background:#EEEEEE;"
| ''Bufo gargarizans'' Cantor, 1842 || Chusan Island toad, Asiatic toad
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| ''Bufo japonicus'' Temminck and Schlegel, 1838 || Japanese toad
|-style="background:#FFFDFF;"
| †''Bufo linquensis'' Yang, 1977 ||
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| ''Bufo luchunnicus'' || Luchun stream toad
|-style="background:#FFFDFF;"
| ''Bufo menglianus'' || Menglian stream toad
|-style="background:#FFFDFF;"
| ''Bufo pageoti'' Bourret, 1937 || Tonkin toad
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| ''Bufo scorteccii'' Balletto and Cherchi, 1970 || Scortecci's toad
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| ''Bufo spinosus'' Daudin, 1803 || Spiny toad
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| ''Bufo stejnegeri'' Schmidt, 1931 || Stejneger's toad, Korean toad, Water toad
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| ''Bufo torrenticola'' Matsui, 1976 || Honshū toad, Japanese stream toad
|-style="background:#FFFDFF;"
| ''Bufo tuberculatus'' Zarevskij, 1926 || Qinghai Lake toad, Round-warted toad
|-style="background:#EEEEEE;"
| ''Bufo tuberospinius'' ||
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| ''Bufo verrucosissimus'' || Caucasian toad
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