It was past ten and the rainforest was filled with silence with the mist covering it completely and making visibility to only few meters. I was walking along the path of the grassland to see the great gathering of the Common Indian Toad but I was taken aback as there was very little visibility. Venturing a little further into the grassland, the sudden silence was broken by the loud call of the Bull Frog. I ventured forward in search of the call and was stunned to by what met my eyes, the green grassland was covered with bright yellow spots and as I walked closer I noticed the great gathering of thousands of Common Indian Toads for communal breeding.
(The Common Indian Toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus), as their name says, are very common and the male changes color to bright yellow during breeding time while the females are much bigger compared to the male. One important event during their lifecycle is the great gathering for communal breeding which generally occurs after the few days of the monsoon. This gathering has thousands of toads and also has the Garra mullya fish at the same time gathered for breeding; and this is where I got to witness the confused Common Indian Toad.)
Along with the Common Indian Toad, the Garra mullya fish also gathered for breeding here. The Common Indian Toads had a tough time finding the female and when they found one it was covered with a minimum of 10 males. This sometimes resulted in the death of the female frogs. Due to this, the toad’s tendency was to hold onto anything which moved and there we had the confused Common Indian Toads, there were toads which were holding onto the Bull Frog and great numbers gathered on top of my feet. But the one which captured my attention was the one which was holding onto the fish firmly thinking it to be a female Toad :). Click here to see the toad in action.
It is amazing to observe these events in the wild but this also lead me to wonder, are the Common Indian Toads blind or are they blinded by the love for the female.
