Researchers Hope Bad Backs Will Slow Cane Toad Invasion
Posted on: Tuesday, 2 December 2008, 14:15 CST
Researchers believe a bad back might be the only thing that can stop the relentless spread of Australia's poisonous cane toads, which are killing native animals across the nation.
So far, Australia's own army couldn't stop the army of nearly 200 million cane toads.
Campaigns involving residents swinging golf clubs and a plan to freeze them to death in refrigerators have both failed to contain their numbers.
But scientists in Australia now believe evolution has taken over, as the cane toads have begun interbreeding at alarming levels, resulting in arthritis and bad backs that could slow them down.
Rick Shine at Sydney University said cane toads moving across Australia are the fastest amphibians on Earth after their rapid evolution from slow-moving homebodies into road warriors over the past 70 years.
Researchers say thousands of cane toads moving in a front across tropical eastern Queensland state can travel 30 feet overnight.
Those at the front of the invasion near the Western Australian state border can cover 10 times the distance on wet nights.
"Toads that run at the front of the pack are becoming bigger and faster. They have different personalities, different shapes and are developing different physiologies," said Shine.
Observers say the bigger, faster toads produce babies with bigger front legs and longer backs and consequently suffer arthritis.
"We are seeing toads in the Northern Territory with spinal arthritis -- big, bony lumps on their spine," said Shine.
Ranking alongside the catastrophic introduction of rabbits, cane toads are one of Australia's worst environmental mistakes.
The toads, introduced in a batch of 101 from Hawaii in 1935 in a failed bid to control native cane beetles, have spread 1,900 miles from northeast Queensland to Darwin in Australia's tropical north.
The toads, whose skin is poisonous, have led to dramatic declines in populations of native snakes, goanna lizards and quolls, a cat-sized marsupial.
Image Courtesy Bill Waller - Wikipedia
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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