[2] The females of this species are well-known for "incubating" their eggs on their backs, in honeycomb-like depressions directly within the skin, releasing fully-formed froglets after a period of 4–5 months.

Additionally, the Surinam toad's rather flat body shape, combined with rather dark, dull coloration, serves as effective camouflage in the murky waters they inhabit, perfectly mimicking a dead leaf or piece of rotting wood as they await their next meal.

[4] The skin color is mostly light brown with some darker spots on the back, providing good camouflage[4][5] Nostrils are terminal, eyes very small, and the tympanum is missing.

The limbs are in a laterally sprawled position in the plane of the body, and the fingertips are modified into four small lobes.

While the eyes are relatively small and narrow, the species has a lateral line system and neuromast organs which are assumed to help it locate prey and predators.

[8] The Surinam toad, despite its common name, is actually native to several South American countries; as well as Suriname, it is known from Brazil (primarily the states of Acre, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia), Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, and Venezuela, in tropical rainforest regions to the east of the Andes.

[9] Additionally, a small population may be found in the southwestern corner of the island of Trinidad, just north of Venezuela across the Columbus Channel.

[10] The Surinam toad inhabits warm, acidic, murky and slow-moving to still waterways, including streams, backwaters, ponds and seasonal pools after localized flooding; these rich waters often have a low pH due to a high concentration of organic matter and tannins.

Based on these results, P. pipa is an ambush predator that will opportunistically eat anything that falls into the water or that it may encounter when occasionally foraging on land.

The Surinam toad catches prey by entraining large volumes of water for ingestion and by limiting fish escape with its fingers.

The amount of entrained water the frog can ingest is related to its ability to actively increase its body volume.

Its visceral organs—the hyoid and larynx, heart, lungs, liver, esophagus, and stomach—are arranged so as to be capable of moving rearward by up to a third of the length of the body; this gives additional space for expansion of the buccopharyngeal cavity.

The rapid (in c. 12–24 milliseconds) expansion of the buccopharyngeal cavity results in negative pressure; this creates the suction which, in turn, entrains the water containing the prey.

The fish are effectively siphoned into the expanded buccopharyngeal cavity, where it remains for a time, located centrally in the trunk of the frog, not the stomach.

[15] Males of this species do not attract females with croaks, instead producing a sharp clicking sound by snapping the hyoid bone in their throats.

[1] Due to the deforestation and human encroachment on the Amazon rainforest, the species has been found in regions where it would not normally be encountered, such as terrestrial locations.

[20] In a letter to Catherine Clarkson the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes "I envy dear Southey's power of saying one thing at a time in short and close sentences, whereas my thoughts bustle along like a Surinam Toad, with little toads sprouting out of back, side, and belly, vegetating while it crawls".