Vroedmeesterpadden in het centrum van Utrecht

The midwife toads of Utrecht, the true story The authors visited the widow of the person that introduced midwife toads into his garden pond in Utrecht. He chose the midwife toad because this was the species used in the infamous experiments of the notorious Dr. Paul Kammerer. During a vacation in the Pyrenees they found some tadpoles of most probably the midwife toad on a neglected mingolfcourse in a small and drying water body. They collected two dozens of tadpoles which where transported back to Utrecht. In subsequent years they brought back additional tadpoles from a vacation in France (La Drome-region) and received tadpoles from Belgium (Ardennes) from a friend. This mixed population was the source of most of the other introduced populations in the Netherlands (except The Hague and Drenthe).