Where to Find on Campus: In the East Enclosures across from the Flooded Forest, Mississippi River Center
The Wyoming Toad is very special to our Museum & Aquarium! Eight institutions, including the Museum & Aquarium, have been involved in a captive breeding program to recover the species and better understand it. The Museum & Aquarium itself has bred over 50,000 Wyoming Toads. This has helped the Wyoming Toad population grow significantly.
Diet: Some of the Wyoming Toad’s favorite foods include cockroaches, mealworms, night crawlers, and bean weevils. The Museum & Aquarium also gets 8,000 crickets a week to feed them!
Lifespan: In the wild, these toads only live about 10 years.*
Size: Generally, female Wyoming Toads are bigger than males. A Wyoming Toad can grow to be 4 inches in length and only 3 ounces heavy.*
Conservation Story: The International Union for Conservation of Nature red list (IUCN) has the Wyoming Toad listed as “Extinct in Nature”. In the 1980s, there were as few as seven individuals remaining. While the exact cause of the Wyoming Toad’s decline remains unknown, some possible causes include aerial spraying of pesticides, red-leg disease, Chytrid Fungus, and Habitat Alteration. Since the decline, multiple captive breeding programs have been put in place. For more information on our Wyoming Toad conservation program, visit our Savings Species page!
*Some information referenced on this page came from Soft Schools.