Perhaps one or the other of the inclined readers has already thought about the perfect death.
Anyone who thinks of leaving during a ménage-à-trois, of which one does not really notice anything because a blissful smile is still on the face due to hormonally-related clouding of consciousness, is recommended to be reborn as a common toad.
The clasps in the picture on the left may mistakenly remind you of a gentle group cuddling, but it has nothing to do with it. It’s a tough fight for life and death.
What I fished out of the pond here was a ball of at least four common toads.
One male let go again right at the beginning and swam away, but the other two held on to their beloved for about a quarter of an hour.
Shortly after the rescue, the male in front raised his chest very slowly, apparently to take a deep breath.
It was the weakest of the three and barely conscious.
The second male seemed stronger and a little bigger, but it let go and jumped back into the water after a while.
A short time later, the female hopped back into the pond and swam away with her original partner.
This time everything went well, but the prospects are bad. After the mating season, I thoroughly search the pond every year and remove the dead toads.
It is not only important that the female is healthy and strong; the male must also be in an insufficient condition.
Its job is not only to end up fertilizing the spawn, but it must also use its hind legs to keep intrusive rivals at bay.
As soon as a second male has the opportunity to cling on, a third soon follows, and then the female is very quickly immobile and doomed.
In the first few years, when the number of incoming toads is low, this danger does not exist.
At the moment, more than ten males are waiting for the next female in our pond.
Then she must catch one of the stronger males because the entire procedure takes a week, and carelessness can be dangerous.
Sometimes you read that a well-divided bank area would help so that not all males reach the female simultaneously.
In my opinion, the real danger comes later. The photo on the bottom is from the previous day. The toad couple is harassed by the restless males who calculate their chances of inheriting their ailing competitor.
To prevent this, I could fish as many surplus males as possible and keep them in an aquarium until a place becomes free or the mating season is over.
Basically, that would mean interfering with natural selection.
The common toad system guarantees that only strong females and males reproduce.
In contrast to most domestic frogs, who can get by with a maximum of 500 eggs per clutch, a female common toad spawns up to ten times as many eggs in two double strings.
It doesn’t take that many successful pairs to ensure the species’ conservation, and the pond probably couldn’t feed such a large number of tadpoles either.
So in the sense of nature, everything is correct.
It is also impressive to see how the female, who recently struggled for her life, jumped death-defyingly into the waters again, perhaps to bring the risky reproductive work to a good end.
She has no other chance either.
She can’t just lug around five thousand eggs for the rest of the year.
Then she would quickly die of hardening of the spawn.
She has to finish her business, no matter what the cost, including her life if necessary.