American spadefoot toad
family of amphibians
The Scaphiopodidae are a family of American spadefoot toads, which are native to North America. The family is small, comprising only eleven different species.
The American spadefoot toads are of typical shape to most fossorial (or burrowing) frogs. They are round, with short legs and protruding eyes. As suggested by their name, these frogs have hard, keratinous protrusions present on their feet, which help them to dig. Like most fossorial frogs, they dig backwards into the ground. They differ from true toads because they have vertical pupils and no parotoid gland.
The American spadefoot toads are terrestrial when not underground. They are dully colored, usually a grey or dull green or brown, to aid in camouflage in their arid habitats.
Taxonomy
The American spadefoot toads were previously included in a broader circumscription of the family Pelobatidae, which then united Palaearctic and Neoarctic spadefoot toads in the same family.
“American spadefoot toad” enters the record as family of amphibians. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what American, spadefoot and toad can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “American spadefoot toad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.