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Cane Toads (Australia)

millomite

millomite

Devoted Cultist
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(Transplanted from the 'When Plants Attack' thread)

Timble said:
Alternatively this thread could be called the 'lesser of two weevils', or 'it's grown hyacinth yesterday'.

At: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1223065,00.html

It shows what happens went you try to manage one ecological cock-up by eco-friendly means, but only succeed in setting off another mess.
Click to expand...

This happened in Australia with the Cane Toad. It was introduced to get rid of an insect I think and surprise, surprise it is now the pest!
 
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At least you can lick cane toads! ;)
 
I don't think I'd like to do that personally but if thats your bag then be my guest!
 
escargot said:
At least you can lick cane toads! ;)
Click to expand...

Ah, I hope you realise that they're actually poisonous before you try it.

An odd thing about Australian culture, it's considered acceptable to torture to death cane toads by people who otherwise would never harm another living creature. You wouldn't believe some of the things people do to them. Strange really.
 
They do tend to explode rather effectively when driven upon at high speed! :)
 
And burn very well when doused with petrol and set on fire. Pretty colours.

Also fun to hit with golf clubs.

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Not that I would do any of these things of course....
 
NT frog 'eats' cane toad

Researchers in the Northern Territory believe they may have found the first natural predator of the cane toad.

FrogWatch NT says early tests run in captivity have found the frog species litoria dahlii can eat tadpoles and infant cane toads without any apparent side effects from the venom.

The group says a frog predator in the Northern Territory could explain why cane toad numbers have been limited in some areas.

It says the dahliis populate black soil plain country in large numbers and do not live in other areas populated by the toad, like Queensland.

However, coordinator Graeme Sawyer says no proof that the frog is a toad predator has been found in the wild.

He says the group will know for sure what effect the frogs when toads arrive in the outskirts of Darwin during the wet season.

"We still don't know for sure whether they do it in the wild but I'm pretty sure they do," Mr Sawyer said.

"We know dahlii's a frog predator and so cane toads appear to be pretty easy prey for them as the tadpoles are very slow and the small cane toads are pretty slow as well.

"I'm just surprised they can eat them and not die."

Mystery solved?

Mr Sawyer says the discovery could explain a phenomenon that frog-watchers previously had not taken much notice of.

"We anticipated that at Mount Ringwood station, where we've been doing a lot of this work this year, the cane toads would have got there 18 months ago," he said.

"They didn't and we've got no idea why but it could be because those flood plains have got a lot of dahliis on it."

Two cane toads have been found in Darwin's outer regions in the last fortnight, firming the prediction the toads will arrive in force this wet season.

Mr Sawyer is confident toad numbers can be controlled through traps, toad musters and egg and tadpole removal.

He says Darwin's weather could play a big factor because the toads become vulnerable in the dry season.

"Our big strategy is to knock the toad population right down during the dry season because when toads move into an area it seems to take between five and seven years for their numbers to build up," he said.

"What we believe [is] if we can keep knocking them back every dry season the numbers will never build up."

'Muck in'

Experts are confident the pest will never settle in Darwin like it has in Queensland.

Mr Sawyer says if everyone mucks in, cane toads will not become a common sight in the city.

"[We're] going to see what happens when they hit this country out here in Humpty Doo," he said.

"They're going to be more difficult to maintain. There's lots of natural waterways and stuff out here as well.

"I really think we can probably keep Darwin, Palmerston and parts of the rural area to almost toad-free status.

"There'll probably be the odd one around but they should never get into those areas and build up into huge numbers."

Mr Sawyer says collection depots should be set up in Darwin and Palmerston to encourage people to join the toad fight.

He says it is a chance for council and government to implement their toad management strategies.

"It's obviously an issue for people who don't want to kill toads, people who don't want to put toads in their freezer, to have a collection depot where they can just drop the live toads off," he said.

"[Then] whatever happens to them is not their problem.

"I'm hopeful of getting the Government and the council to combine to set up these collection points because if they don't, the councils face getting a lot of dead toad bodies at their rubbish tips."

Last Update: Wednesday, December 15, 2004. 7:31am (AEDT)http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1265310.htm
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:D
Crikey! That is some good news. Go you litoria dahlii thing.
 
Here's hoping it's not going a case of "meet the old boss - same as the old boss."

(Litoria dahlii stands over crumpled body of enormous cane toad, lights cigarette and whispers in a gravelly voice "I'm the daddy now.")
 
Spook said:
Here's hoping it's not going a case of "meet the old boss - same as the old boss."

(Litoria dahlii stands over crumpled body of enormous cane toad, lights cigarette and whispers in a gravelly voice "I'm the daddy now.")
Click to expand...

* and from the shadows, steps baron greenback accompanied by stilletto, and that wierd furry thingy (what was that anyway? :confused: )*

"not so fast dahii!, im still top dog here, and i have a little job for you. get rid of dangermouse and ill let you keep austrailia"[/i]
 
*{- Meanwhile on ther outskirts of Darwin, hordes of mighty litoria dahlii commandos are in rigorous training. Cries of 'Frog the culverts!' 'HOP one , two. HOP one, two!' can be heard. And specialist lit dahs practice in cane toad camo, for deep cover operations...}*

:p Lamentably no frog emoticon
 
melf said:
* and from the shadows, steps baron greenback accompanied by stilletto, and that wierd furry thingy (what was that anyway? :confused: )*
Click to expand...

A Persian caterpillar.

Fruit drops!
 
melf said:
* and from the shadows, steps baron greenback accompanied by stilletto, and that wierd furry thingy (what was that anyway? :confused: )*
Click to expand...

Nero ("voiced" by David Jason)

[edit: Club DM gives his full name as "Emperor Nero the Second of Chorlton-cum-Hardy"

www.clubdm.com/characters.html

Now theres a thing.]
 
melf said:
Spook said:
Here's hoping it's not going a case of "meet the old boss - same as the old boss."

(Litoria dahlii stands over crumpled body of enormous cane toad, lights cigarette and whispers in a gravelly voice "I'm the daddy now.")
Click to expand...

* and from the shadows, steps baron greenback accompanied by stilletto, and that wierd furry thingy (what was that anyway? :confused: )*

"not so fast dahii!, im still top dog here, and i have a little job for you. get rid of dangermouse and ill let you keep austrailia"[/i]
Click to expand...

Actually our Prime Minister (Australia's) John Howard looks a lot like Penfield...
It couldn't be, could it? Although it DOES explain a few things...
:(
 
Researchers welcome evolution of cane toad's predator
Researchers at the University of Sydney say they have found two species of snakes in Queensland have changed their body shape to avoid being killed by the cane toad.

Professor of evolutionary biology Richard Shine says studies on the black snake and the golden tree snake have found over the 70 years the toads have been in Queensland, the snake's heads have become smaller and their bodies larger.

Professor Shine says this means the snakes are eating smaller toads and are less likely to be killed by the toad's poison.

"A big snake with a small head turns out to be the best possible size and shape if you want to survive eating a toad," Professor Shine said.

"It means that the biggest toad you can eat is actually quite small compared to your own body size so it's pretty unlikely that you can get enough poison in from the toad in to kill you."

"We can't pretend that the native predators have recovered entirely.

"Some of these snakes are still very scarce over a lot of the range of the toads but the signs are encouraging.

"It looks like good old evolution is working and that we can hope in 100 years time there'll be some pretty dramatic recoveries."

Professor Shine says they will be studying snakes in the Northern Territory to see if a similar evolutionary process may occur.

Last Update: Thursday, December 23, 2004. 8:03am (AEDT)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/20 ... 270907.htm
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:D
More good news!

r15303_37576.jpg

Killer! Your days are numbered, evil one...
 
No proof of cane toads' impact: expert

People have proposed trapping them, bludgeoning them, baiting them, freezing them, fencing them in and launching biological and genetic warfare on them.

But an expert says there is no hard evidence about how bad Australia's cane toads really are.

Professor Ross Alford, of Queensland's James Cook University, has told an Ecological Society of Australia conference that despite the fear and loathing surrounding the cane toad, it is unclear how much long-term damage they can cause.

"Although there's a widespread perception that cane toads are incredibly damaging to the environment there isn't actually a whole lot of scientific evidence," he said.

"There's evidence that they're damaging to some things ... but it's not entirely clear that they will send them extinct."

In fact, Professor Alford says there is plenty of evidence that some species can coexist perfectly well with them and that cane toads can form part of the food chain.

Cane toads were introduced to northern Queensland in 1935 to control beetles that were destroying sugar cane crops.

But they became a much bigger pest themselves, eating or poisoning native fauna and threatening crops.

According to the federal Department of the Environment and Heritage, the animals have reached the north coast of New South Wales.

They are expanding southwards at about 1.3 kilometres a year, as well as marching towards Western Australia.

In response, the Federal Government is backing a number of initiatives, including unleashing genetically modified viruses on them.

There have even been proposals to build a massive fence between the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Costs v benefits

But Professor Alford says these elaborate measures could turn out to be a waste of money, which could be better targeted at other invasive species.

"To make rational decisions about how much money to spend and how hard to work controlling them we ought to know a bit more about how much damage they do," he said.

"If we're going to do things like build a fence or release genetically modified viruses ... we should do a cost-benefit analysis to make sure we get back more than we spend."

But Professor Alford stresses he is not suggesting cane toads should be given free rein to continue their continental colonisation, and says local management should continue in the form of fencing and trapping.

"They may not be a total disaster and till we know how much of a disaster they are we should continue work on controlling them," he said.

Dr Tony Robinson, a senior CSIRO research scientist, says Australia currently spends $1 million a year on cane toad control research.

That includes work at the CSIRO aimed at engineering viruses and finding pathogens and other deadly infectious agents against these amphibians.

He says measuring the damage caused by cane toads is extremely difficult and can be just as costly as controlling them.

"What [the Government] has decided is yes, we can spend a lot of money on measuring its impact, but there's plenty of evidence that it is poisoning some species," he said.

"Rather than wait 10 or 20 years to quantify that, they're making the decision that [the toads] are having an impact, so what can we do about it?"
Click to expand...

Last Update: Thursday, December 1, 2005. 4:46pm (AEDT)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1521037.htm

Crikey! Not enough scientific evidence?
 
I live in Brisbane and in the wet season, now, we have to check our garden every night before we let the dog out. Unfortunately our dog is good looking but not very bright and is likely to think a cane toad is a great toy.

So far this year my husband has killed 5. One blow with the sharp end of a shovel does the trick. Even though they are ugly if they weren't poisonous I would say live and let live, they could take their chances with fido.

I'm sorry but the thought of putting them in the freezer creeps me out. :err:

At our last house we lived not far from a potato farm and some evenings the backyard was full of them, one even came in the house when I went to go outside. We couldn't bring ourselves to commit a massacre and as we had a different dog at the time we just kept an eye on him when he went out.

It would be great if there was a natural predator of the toad. Besides humans of course. But like others have pointed out would the cure be worse.
 
I grew up in Brisbane, and if you've only had to kill 5, you've had a quiet time.

Ahh, the memories of my father swerving all over the road at night to hit them.

As for their ecological impact: They eat anything small enough to fit in their mouths, which is pretty big. They are toxic to anything bigger than them that tries to eat them. Without any natural predators, they breed at amazing rates.

By all means, there are other invasive species that are arguably more damaging. Rabbits for example. Cats may even have a bigger impact on native fauna. But saying "Oh, just ignore the cane toads, they're harmless" is misguided.
 
Anome_ said:
I grew up in Brisbane, and if you've only had to kill 5, you've had a quiet time.
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The season has only just started so the death toll may yet rise

[quote="Anome_]As for their ecological impact: They eat anything small enough to fit in their mouths, which is pretty big.[/quote]

Does that mean if we get rid of the toads we get more cockroaches.? The spiders are getting the mozzies and the geckoes are getting the spiders. I suspect the geckoes might be getting some cockroaches because sometimes we find a leg on the kitchen bench. I'd be quite happy for the toads to eat the grasshoppers because the birds can eat aphids ( I think)

I thought the solution would be get rid of the dog but if we attract more birds
then we get more cats and while they're good at keeping the rodents down
they like to use the garden beds as a toilet.................. :headbutt:

Or we could just nuke the lot of 'em - but that wouldn't be too good for us. :splat:
 
British viewers may care to know that Mark Lewis's classic cane toads documentary is being shown on BBC4 this Sunday night at 21.05.
 
Cane toads evolve longer legs.

One in the eye for Creationists and IDers. Evolution in action and it's not friendly.


In Nature

Cane toads leg it across Australia
Pests are evolving longer legs to speed their invasion.
Carina Dennis
Longer-legged toads hop further faster

© Ben Phillips

Need to get somewhere fast? Growing longer legs is the cane toad's answer. The amphibian pest is accelerating its march across the Australian landscape, leaving a trail of ecological devastation.

Cane toads (Bufo marinus) were first introduced to the country 70 years ago in an attempt to control beetles. But the invader began eating other native fauna and spread across much of the country, wreaking havoc along the way (see 'The toads are coming!').

In the frog world, the cane toad is typically thought of as a slow plodder. But, in a report published in this week's Nature, researchers from the University of Sydney debunk this perception.

By strapping tiny radiotransmitters to the toads' waists, the researchers revealed that they can travel at an alarming rate. The sprinters can move up to 1.8 kilometres a night and generally opt to travel along roads. "The toads are making it on their own - they aren't hitchhiking on the back of trucks as had been suspected," says Richard Shine, who led the research team.

"Toads are slow. They don't jump, they just kind of crawl. The idea that they are long-distance athletes is amusing and surprising," says David Skelly, an amphibian ecologist at Yale University in Connecticut.

So how are they making the distance so easily? Shine and his colleagues looked at preserved museum specimens and historical records and found that the toads have become 25% leggier and fivefold faster over a 60-year period.

The researchers checked that the long legs really do translate into speedy crawling. Camping out in the wilderness in advance of the pests' invasive front, the researchers measured leg length as the newcomers arrived. They found that the first arrivals had legs stretching up to 45% of their total body length. Later waves of toads consisted of shorter-limbed kinfolk; frogs arriving a year later had legs measuring about 40% of their body length.

Although insects and bacteria quickly adapt to changing circumstances, Skelly says this study is one of the first known examples of a vertebrate rapidly evolving in a new environment. "People have this deep-seated feeling that vertebrates don't evolve on of these sorts of timescales. But this work shows that it can happen," says Skelly. Cane toads typically start breeding at the age of one year, and can produce some 200,000 eggs in an average ten-year lifespan.

Accelerating cane toads are bad news for conservationists. "The toads will make it to Western Australia earlier than thought. We need to do something pretty quick," says Shine. Despite attempts to curtail the invaders, it looks - for now at least - as if the cane toad is outpacing such efforts.
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Hmmm... So in 2000 years they'll be Six foot tall, able to jump across Kakadu ina few easly, quick lopes and then beat the shit out of local croodiles...

Crikey!
 
I'd like to see Steve Irwin wrestling with a giant Cane Toad.
 
I'd like to see Steve Irwin wrestling a giant squid. At approximately 10 000 fathoms.
 
Article on the toads from the BBC with some more advice on destroying them:

Australians hunt down toxic toads

[...]

Residents are being urged to defend the front-line on "Not In My Backyard Day", which is sponsored by the Northern Territory government

[...]

Federal MP Dave Tollner says that the toads deserve no mercy.

"I suggested that people should hit them with golf clubs or cricket bats or, you know, lumps of wood - whatever was at hand.

"Other people have suggested that you should put them in a box and then gas them with the exhaust of your car. The RSPCA also suggests chemical euthanasia.

"You know, to me it seems far easier just to flog them over the head with a lump of wood," he says.

[...]

Australia's RSPCA believes that these warty creatures are a menace and should be destroyed.

It recommends that they be smeared with haemorrhoid cream.

It contains a local anaesthetic that induces a coma.

The toads are then placed in a freezer and the job is done humanely.
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BBC
 
It's good for removing puffiness around the eyes as well...
:p
 
Cane toad may hop onto icons list

The National Trust of Queensland says it is considering adding the cane toad to its list of state icons.

The trust's current list, which has 24 items, includes the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the mango tree and the pub with no beer.

Its chief executive, Penny Cook, says the trust is looking to expand the list and the cane toad is under consideration.

"Icons are things that are distinctly Queensland, that make us think of ourselves as Queenslanders," she said.

"Certainly story of the cane toad over the past 70 years is part of that history.

"So it may well be a pest, but again, it's been nominated and so we have to consider it under the criteria."

Ms Cook says whether people hate cane toads or not, they do associate the animals with Queensland.
'Horrible example'

The president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Professor Ian Lowe, admits the pest has made one contribution to the state.

"It's been said everyone has a purpose in life, if only to serve as a horrible example," he said.

"I think the cane toad is a tragic example of the need to consider the overall ecological implications before we make one change to a complex system."

But Professor Lowe does not support listing the cane toad as an icon.

"Certainly the cane toad is not something that we should be proud of," he said.

"I think people interstate might see it as reinforcing their suspicion that there's something a bit odd about Queensland.

"It'd be rather like New South Wales listing the rabbit, or South Australia listing the blackberry vine.

"We probably should think twice about what the rest of Australia will think about this."

The cane toad was introduced to Australia 70 years ago to control cane beetles.

It has now spread to three states, threatening native wildlife.
Click to expand...
[url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/n...w.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/20 ... 659759.htm[/url]

Ooh! Another state icon! Of course there's something odd about Queensland!
 
A nine Iron would be handy...

Frogwatch uncovers cane toad infestation at NT golf club

Frogwatch has found about 15,000 cane toad tadpoles at the Palmerston Golf Club in the Northern Territory.

Frogwatch spokesman Graeme Sawyer says the massive infestation was discovered during a toad bust in the area on Friday night.

He says it is the only infestation discovered in the past few weeks in the area.

Mr Sawyer is urging local residents to be on the lookout for cane toads during the dry season as they have to stick to water.

"We can get stuck into them now and wipe them out of Palmerston so we need people to check their backyards and also these sorts of public places, and we should be able to get Palmerston back to toad free status by Christmas," he said.

He says Frogwatch only has until the end of the dry season to try contain the noxious pest.

"Toads have stopped moving at the moment so there's no more waves of cane toads coming in out of the bush into Palmerston, that's already happened and what's out there now is sort of sitting on water waiting for the rains to come back," he said.

"So our job is to find them before that happens and get rid of them."
Click to expand...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200608/s1707368.htm
 
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