Sonoran Desert Toad

The Sonoran Desert toad, also widely known as the Colorado River toad, is one of the largest toads native to North America, found across the Sonoran Desert region of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. It has smooth, olive-green to gray skin and large, elongated paratoid glands that, along with other skin glands, secrete a potent venom containing bufotoxins and the psychoactive compound 5-MeO-DMT. That secretion has drawn illegal collection and smoking of dried venom for its hallucinogenic effects, a practice conservationists and Indigenous groups have criticized as a threat to wild populations and disrespectful of the toad's traditional ceremonial significance. It is largely nocturnal and spends much of the year underground, emerging in large numbers to breed in temporary pools immediately after the summer monsoon rains begin.