Hello all,

I went to my favorite reptile shop in San Diego this past Friday and I discovered and purchased a Yellow Bellied Toad. But first let me give you all some background information, I purchased and now own 3 Fire Bellied Toads and have had them for a little over a year now. They are absolutely facinating creatures and that's what prompted me to do more research on them. What I found is that there is about 8 species of them and only 4 are distributed, out of all of the species I was particularly interested in obtaining a Yellow Bellied Toad (Bombina Variegata) and was severly unsuccessful. I have been looking through forums and search engines to purchase one for about six months now without any luck, so I figured maybe they just aren't available for purchase in the U.S. If that's the case then they should be pretty rare? Does that mean they can be pretty expensive? In any case I went to my local reptile store and picked up some items for my Eastern Collared Lizard and my 4 year old pointed out the Fire Bellied Toads which I initially ignored until my wife noticed one with a yellowish belly. There was about 10 FBT's and in the center was this big brown fat lumpy toad that dwarfed all the other FBT's and I knew that this could be a YBT from previous research. It wasn't until I asked the store clerk to take it out that I discovered it had a yellow belly. The clerk said it couldn't be so I rushed to pay for it before she knew what it was, that's assuming she knew what it was in which case I didn't care I just wanted to take him home. When I got home I compared the YBT to my FBT's and noticed that in comparison to the FBT's this guys belly was pretty yellow. I also discovered he has heart shaped eyes which from what I've read that is one of the signs beside the dark brown and yellow bellies. Currently I'm ecstatic and can't believe I found this YBT! I will upload pictures later today but please post any comments as I still don't believe it is possible to find one of these guys, I'm no expert and can definetly be wrong.