YELOW BELLIED TOAD PART 2 - BOMBINA SCABRA from GREECE

Now many years ago I saw some adult size Bombina that were very big. They were a very light sandy colour, think beach sand, had faint greenish flecks on the back too and with Orange-Yellow bellies. My father had them and I passed them up as hybrids though I even admitted at the time they WERE the most bizarre hybrids that I had ever seen and so nice I almost took some home!

Fast forward several years and I am standing in a school sports hall in Walsall just outside Birmingham at a IHS Show, International Herpetological Society, and someone I know has four of the exact same Bombina in a couple of small plastic PenPal type containers only the label states Bombina scabra!!

By the time I had gotten home that day I needed some bandages from all the serious kicking I gave myself!!

I mentioned to someone recently that there were four European species I would like to get and three of these were Bombina and one an Italian Alpine Newt (SEE NEXT POST). Fast forward a couple of weeks and I have now three of the four I mentioned all of which I would have had in the last 6 years despite my not keeping animals for over ten years!! Bizarre!

WELL...I say that I have three of the four and that I have scabra but I cannot say with absolute certainty. However I doubt the individual that had these would have the nominal variegata form. Added to this though small they look a little like pachypus right now, which is unusual and would expect scabra to at this size, and also the Yellow formed under the hind legs is looking an orange yellow already?! You can see this from the pictures below.

When they first leave the water that have some of the intense colours but normally restricted to the rear legs. You can see some washed out colour on the bellies and anything that is light and not a black spot WILL go yellow. The amount of the intense colours as well as the intensity develops with age but the time varies.

Nominal variegata and kolombatovici develop them very early on and even after just a month or two can have most of the colour and pattern they are going to have.

Now Bombina pachypus take somewhat longer and I suspect this is down to the fact that they are orange and not yellow. It is hard to get any youngsters to the same intensity and amount of colurs as the adults but after breeding mine several times years ago I did fathom out why and how.

Sunlight!

Thise in the know will know that feeding any young Bombina a natural aquatic food like Daphnia and Bloodworm will intensify the colours on the belly. Because these foods contain a natural carotene that they utilise to form the colours. However my pachypus young would never go the deep vivid tangerine colour of the original 6 specimens and nor would they acquire as much. That is until an accidental hybrid of pahypus and another turned up in my garden pond as a sub adult and orange underneath and I realised the missing factor was sunlight.

Bare in mind that rare for amphibians these are daytime animals, DIURNAL, and live in shallow ponds or puddles, or the flooded verges of larger ponds and lakes for Bombina bombina, so get sunlight most of the time. Yes it IS obvious when you think about it and yes I kicked myself for the last ten years for not realising this years before hand! LOL!

Anyway both the Bombina kolombatovici and the Bombina scabra have doubled in size since I had them. To help with the carotene intake they have been fed live Daphnia, Bloodworm as well as small crickets but only after the crickets have consumed a couple of lots of Spirulina Flakes. These feeding crickets the Spirulina is another way of getting Carotene into the toads, as Spirulina is an algae and has high amounts of it.

There WILL be two more parts on Yellow Bellied Toads in time as well as one of the European Fire Bellied Toad along with some Asian forms in due course.

 The above animal is smaller then the one below (scabra and kolombatovici respectively) and note how the colour of the above is more intense than the one below which is quite unusual. Kolombatovici are a more vivid and intense yellow than the nominate form of variegata by some margin. SO that orange look of the above picture tends to have me placing my money on Bombina scabra!

This could turn out to be a female as the males in both kolombatovici and pachypus have slightly more yellow than the females and it is slightly more vivid too. So if you pick up two and compare bellies and one is more vivid with less in the way of dark spots then chances are they are a male and female.