Toads And Frogs - About Their Benefits In The Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Going out into the garden, I saw how my neighbors - a rather elderly married couple, loudly indignant, scamper through the beds, and do something with mops among the strawberry bushes. Intrigued, I approached the fence separating our summer cottages and asked: what are they doing?

- Yes, frogs and toads suck strawberries … - complained out of breath owner Vasily Demyanych. He, like many others, mistakenly calls strawberries strawberries.

- And here frogs eat cucumbers, - another neighbor Anna Ivanovna entered the conversation.

“They always have warts,” Anna Ivanovna’s granddaughter, fifteen-year-old Olga, said with conviction.

“You are all greatly mistaken,” I explained to them.

Toads and frogs are not vegetarians, they eat exclusively animal food. And only one that moves. But they cannot suck, gnaw or bite, even if they wanted to … The structure of their mouths is such that they can only seize prey with their tongue and swallow whole. They have no teeth either

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For a long time I have been explaining to them the unreasonableness of their actions in relation to these amphibians. He explained that the warts that allegedly appear on the hands of the one who held the toad is a persistent prejudice associated with the fact that the skin of the toad is covered with numerous warty bumps. These bumps do contain poisonous substances. But experience and observations have proved that poisonous substances protect animals from predators, and they are harmless to humans.

I can't say whether they believed me or not, but Vasily Demyanich and his wife did not touch toads and frogs anymore. And I, looking at them, thought that my neighbors are by no means alone among those who consider frogs and toads to be harmful creatures. After all, the most incredible stories and absurdities have been told about these harmless creatures since ancient times.

For example, the Swiss zoologist Konrad Gesner, who lived in the 16th century, reported the following about toads and frogs in his major work "History of Animals":

The first to refute these and similar malicious inventions and toads and frogs and appreciated their benefits for landowners, was the famous Alfred Brehm. Here is his point of view …

The same thing happens in our time. The time of the Internet, computers and space communications. My neighbors, and most of the other summer residents, are a clear confirmation of this.

Many gardeners simply do not know that toads and frogs are extremely useful for the garden and vegetable garden. Not only do they never damage anything, but on the contrary, they bring tremendous benefits, exterminating numerous pests of agricultural crops.

After all, these amphibians go hunting at night, when the vast majority of birds are sleeping. And it is then that moths, moths, and their caterpillars come to life. The field slugs, feeding at nightfall, are especially dangerous. Not only do they gnaw garden plants, they also infect them with various dangerous diseases. And these slugs are the favorite food of the gray toads.

Frogs and toads catch insects with an unpleasant smell and taste that birds reject. And they destroy insects with a protective color, which birds do not notice. These amphibians are harvested by the bear, snacking on and processing the roots of cucumbers, tomatoes, beets, carrots and other crops.

The “menu” of toads and frogs also includes striped clickers, filly, bedbugs, all kinds of beetles, caterpillars, mosquitoes and their larvae. And toads also exterminate the Colorado potato beetle and its larvae, hated by all summer residents.

It is clear that the benefits of frogs and toads are enormous. Therefore, try not only not to cause harm, but on the contrary, protect them in every possible way. After all, they have a lot of enemies in nature. The main destroyers are storks and herons. Also, cranes, eagle owls, crows, seagulls, catfish, pike are not averse to eating frogs. The eggs of frogs are eaten by many birds, primarily ducks. Tadpoles serve as food for magpies, fieldbirds and red-browed thrushes. Many toads and frogs die on the roads in spring when they head to the spawning grounds.