The Couch's Spadefoot Toad, (Scaphiopus couchii) is a species of North American spadefoot toad native to the southwestern United States and the Baja region of Mexico. The epithet couchii is in honor of American naturalist Darius Nash Couch, who collected the first specimen while on a personal expedition to northern Mexico to collect plant, mineral and animal specimens for the Smithsonian Institution.
These toads can be found throughout the Sonora...
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The Couch's Spadefoot Toad, (Scaphiopus couchii) is a species of North American spadefoot toad native to the southwestern United States and the Baja region of Mexico. The epithet couchii is in honor of American naturalist Darius Nash Couch, who collected the first specimen while on a personal expedition to northern Mexico to collect plant, mineral and animal specimens for the Smithsonian Institution.
These toads can be found throughout the Sonoran Desert, including Arizona. How can you tell the species? True toads have horizontal pupils but the spadefoots have vertical pupils (like cats). Look at the sole of a hind foot. There you'll find the hard, dark "spade" that gives a spadefoot its name. There are only two spadefoot species in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and California. If the space is sickleshaped, it's Couch's spadefoot, Scaphiopus couchi. If the spade is rounded, it's the western spadefoot, Scaphiopus hammondii(called the southern spadefoot, Scaphiopus multiplicatus, in...
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