
Originally Posted by
Dace
This isn't my thread.
I am aware that toads are fairly intelligent, at least by amphibian standards, but they're still really dumb compared to any mammal or bird. Even some insects such as solitary wasps display the same capability for learning and even simple problem solving. Toads are still just ambush predators, concerned only with breeding, eating and staying hidden. They don't exhibit complex social or territorial behavior, they barely hunt, and they certainly don't need cognitive enrichment to be happy. For a frog or toad, "Not diseased, injured, starving or in immediate peril" (or what is perceived as immediate peril) almost certainly translates to the same thing as "happy."
Saying that frogs have "territories covering miles" is an extremely wild claim and I have personally witnessed evidence that it is not true.
Take a look a the snake keeping hobby. Snakes move around all the time when they want to eat or breed. They cross roads and enter houses in search of prey, places to bask or hibernate, and mates. But what a snake really wants to do is curl up in a warm, safe hole or under a rock and digest its latest meal. In captivity, hobbyists keep and breed snakes in tiny containers that they can't even stretch to their full length in- yet they're perfectly happy. They might roam in search of resources in the wild, but in captivity where they have all of their feeding, temperature and breeding needs hand delivered to them in a small, safe space they never feel the need to go anywhere and are perfectly content. I'm not saying this is the same for frogs and toads, they are very different from snakes and certainly need some space to move around but it's just an example of how captivity and the wild can be very different places even for the same wild animal.