Amphibia · Anura
Anaxyrus exsulMyers, 1942
Black Toad
Photograph by Trevor Van Loon, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A toad reaching 71 mm snout to vent.
Amphibia › Anura › Bufonidae › Anaxyrus
- Grows to
- 71mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Diurnal, nocturnal
- Lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
- Weighs up to
- 52g
- greatest
Longer than 73% of all toads anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 13 to 250 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
19 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Conservation status
- Vulnerable
- Population trend
- Stable
as reported by the IUCN Red List
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 71mm2.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult mean
- 64mm2.5 in
- Body mass · greatestmeasured
- 52g1.8 oz
snout-to-vent length, as this source reports for Anura
mean adult snout-to-vent length; this source did not separate the sexes for this species
maximum adult body mass as recorded in the source
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Yes
- Eats vertebrates
- Unknown
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
- Active
- Diurnal, nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
- Active in
- Wet and warm
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- How the young develop
- Through a larval stage
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Mature at
- 2years
- Size at maturity
- 44mm
Naming and history
- Described by
- Myers
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1942
Keeping one
Black Toad is assessed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
- Land
- 36 × 36cm
- Water, at least 4 cm deep
- 14 × 7cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 28 cm tall on average.
The standard gives 5 × 5 body lengths of land and 2 × 1 of water, for two animals.
For each further animal the standard asks for another 14 × 14 cm of land and 7 × 7 cm of water.
Swiss Tierschutzverordnung (TSchV), SR 455.1, Anhang 2, Tabelle 6 — legally binding minimum enclosure sizes for amphibians, given as multiples of total body length and stated for two animals.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length, which for a frog is its body length of 2.75 in (71 mm) — how this is worked out.
Black Toad
Feeding
7kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 52 g, the heaviest recorded for Black Toad — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Still living
- — Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Diet
- — How it hunts
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Average clutch
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Venomous
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Limbs
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Red List criteria
- — Region
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Suborder
- — Infraorder
- — Subspecies
- — Type locality
- — Habitat
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Bufonidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Anaxyrus exsul. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/anaxyrus-exsul
@misc{anaxyrus_exsul_2026,
title = {Anaxyrus exsul},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/anaxyrus-exsul}
}Sources
- Oliveira, B.F. et al. (2017). AmphiBIO, a global database for amphibian ecological traits. Scientific Data 4:170123. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Huang, N. et al. (2023). Amphibian traits database: a global database on morphological traits of amphibians. Global Ecology and Biogeography 32, 633-641. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.