A faceless toad? The fully grown adult toad has a healthy body and legs, but is missing its eyes, nose, jaws, and tongue. Instead of a face, it has just a stump covered by soft tissue and a small opening where the mouth used to be, according to herpetologist Jill Fleming of the University of Massachusetts, who discovered the toad in a forest in Connecticut. ).
Fleming discovered the unfortunate creature, an American toad ( Anaxyrus americanus ), in April 2016 in a Connecticut state forest, where he was conducting research on red-spotted red newts. “We sat on a log to process the samples, and the toad kept jumping on our feet. When we looked closely, we realized that it had no face, ” says Fleming.
The herpetologist tweeted a photo of the faceless toad on February 27, inviting herpetologist colleagues to consider what may have caused the animal’s highly unusual condition.
Images and video of the toad showed no signs of a wound where his face presumably once was. However, Fleming explained that this condition is probably not the result of a genetic mutation, as the toad lacked the necessary anatomy to feed and could not have reached adulthood without being able to hunt.
So what happened to the toad?
Most likely, according to the expert, is that he was injured and then managed to heal during the contusion. One possible culprit could have been the infestation of carnivorous toad fly larvae ( Lucilia bufonivora ), which consume the soft tissues of toads and weaken their brittle bones, wildlife veterinarian Lydia Franklinos suggested in a tweet. And it is that these larvae are born on the skin of their host, very close to the nostrils, to which they go after hatching, penetrating and devouring the amphibian from the inside.
Toads can become infested with these parasites when an adult fly lays its eggs in its nostrils or eyes, and the outcome is a horrendous death.
“You will see extensive damage to the toad’s face 48 to 72 hours after the eggs have hatched,” wild vet Lydia Franklinos commented in another tweet.
The rest of the body of the parasitized toad can remain relatively healthy. That’s because facial tissue is destroyed so quickly that the animal has not yet had time to develop signs of malnutrition.
Other motives
Another possible explanation is that while the toad was dormant during hibernation, a predator discovered it and bit its face , Fleming said. Turtles can also be victims of this “hibernation predation”; but they are more likely than toads to survive these attacks, because much of their body is protected by the shell.
Many predators eat toads in the northeastern United States, but this faceless toad’s attacker was likely a mammal, “since snakes and birds tend to swallow things whole,” Fleming said. Perhaps the toad’s hiding place left its head more exposed than the rest of its body, and therefore vulnerable to attack, but it is impossible to know for sure, explained the herpetologist.
Even if a portion of the toad’s brain had been swallowed along with its face, there would still be enough left to keep the toad jumping, as basic motor functions such as breathing and jumping can, in some cases, be fully powered by the brain stem of an animal, says Emily Taylor, a professor of biological sciences at California Polytechnic State University.
“It probably couldn’t eat in this condition. Also, it kept bumping into us, so if we were its natural predators, it would have been eaten very quickly,” Fleming said.
Image credit. Jill fleming
