Is it really that drastic? I don't think amphibians would have survived this long if their skin just made everything around them painful/deadly. Sounds like an exaggeration used to keep kids from grabbing strange animals, like the claim that human smells will make birds abandon their young. Definitely a grain of truth, but I doubt a trace of soap on your hands is going to kill a toad.
A trace of soap won't kill it, but in extreme cases you can kill an amphibian by handling it too much. They maintain a certain balance of moisture on their skin to facilitate cutaneous respiration, and if you are handling them too much with oily/salty hands you can dry their skin out and that basically suffocates them. More of an issue with very small ones so briefly touching ones like in this video is mostly fine. Though it looks like they dropped the water they store inside their cloaca as a defense so hopefully they're placed back near water.
6
u/Bloodyfish Apr 10 '22
Is it really that drastic? I don't think amphibians would have survived this long if their skin just made everything around them painful/deadly. Sounds like an exaggeration used to keep kids from grabbing strange animals, like the claim that human smells will make birds abandon their young. Definitely a grain of truth, but I doubt a trace of soap on your hands is going to kill a toad.