Philip Corno, age 10, of Staten Island, N.Y., for his question:
HOW DO FROGS COMPARE WITH TOADS?
Often we ordinary folk cannot tell which is which. In some cases, we call an animal a frog when by rights he is a toad. However, this is not an unforgivable mistake. True, there are a few basic differences between a frog and a toad, but they are quite slight.
The average frog is a slim, leggy fellow who prefers to spend his adult life in and around his private swimming pool. His skin is usually quite colorful and he likes to keep it moist and clammy.
The average toad is squat and chunky and less interested in exercising. His drab, brownish skin is dry and usually decorated with bumpy warts. His tadpole days may be spent in the water or in dewy patches of greenery, but when he loses his fishy gills and tail he departs to spend his adult life in dryish places, often far from the water.
We share our continent with about 100 assorted species of frogs and toads. But throughout the world there are at least 2,000 different species. Scientists classify them in three separate groups rana, bufo and hyla. Rana is borrowed from an older word for frog, bufo from an older word for toad. Hyla comes from an old word for forest this group includes the pretty little creatures called tree frogs and tree toads.
All frogs and toads are called amphibians, which means land and water. They start life as jellified eggs and spend their kindergarten days either in the water or in moist pockets among the greenery. During this tadpole stage the frisky wrigglers look like black commas. They have fishy tails and fishy gills for taking dissolved oxygen from the water.
They are called tailless amphibians because when the adults trade their gills for air breathing lungs, they also lose their tails. Compared with all these similar features, the differences between the frogs and the toads are not very noticeable.
Usually it is easier to spot the tree frogs and toads of the hyla group. These pretty pixie types tend to be much smaller. Their fingers and toes have wide pads, suitable for clinging and climbing. The tree frogs tend to have moist clammy skins and the tree toads tend to be dry and warty, as you would expect.