Toadlets & tigers

In July, all the American toad (Anaxyrus americanus) tadpoles that survived their aquatic life stage morph into their more familiar terrestrial toad forms.  When they leave the water, they are minuscule - the size and appearance of a piece of gravel.  In some areas, they can be seen en masse near the body of water they originated in.  Once they absorb what's left of their tails, they begin to search for and gobble up all the food they can.  If they slack off, they can very easily become outcompeted by their brethren and die or become gobbled up themselves.  Dehydration is another death sentence they face if they don't get enough to eat.  The less body mass they have, the more vulnerable they are to drying up in the increasingly warming summer season.  It is not unusual at all to find these normally nocturnal animals hunting and feeding constantly as toadlets.  During the day, in overcast conditions, they boldly venture out in the open and Pac-Man themselves to the best of their abilities.  Prolonged heat waves force them to retreat to cooler and wetter areas.  If a young metamorph toad gets caught in the open on a hot, sunny day and is unable to reach shelter, it will quickly succumb to the elements.  Toads are r-strategists, which means they produce many offspring, each with a low probability of surviving to adulthood (this contrasts with K-strategists such as humans, who generally produce far fewer offspring that have better chances of surviving).  If toads produced a few eggs at a time, they'd go extinct within a generation.  However, as nature would have it, each female can lay thousands upon thousands of eggs at one time.  Here are a few photos from a site in Western DuPage County.

Cute, but likely a future statistic.

 One of the lucky ones.

 A large tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) with an interesting kinked tail.

 Self-portrait