Toxic Toads Taking Over Australia

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo News is reporting that toxic toads imported from Hawaii to help control the beetle population that was ravaging Australia's sugar cane crops have instead become pests themselves. From the article: 'The toads can grow as large as dinner plates and weigh up to 4.5 pounds. Their heads and backsides are studded with rows of warts that secrete a milky white toxin called bufotoxin. Because Australia has no native toads, many native predators such as snakes, lizards and mammals are very sensitive to the toxin. So when the toads spread, they immediately kill off many of the region's top predators.'"

Comments

Terrible Summary

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

Cane toads (Bufo marinus) were first brought in from Hawaii in 1935 to control the spread of beetles that were ravaging Australia's sugar cane crop.

Cane toads have been a problem in Australia for a very long time now....this is hardly news.

So why is this a news story? From the TITLE of TFA:

Toxic Toads Evolve Long Legs and Take Over Australia

And from TFA:

When the toads arrived, the researchers found that those in the vanguard of the invasion had legs that were up to 6 percent longer than average; shorter-legged stragglers followed. The study showed that newer populations of toads tended to have longer legs than those in long-established populations.

This is the actual 'news', not the summary's title. Given the FIRST sentence from TFA:

Toxic toads bound across the northern tropics of Australia faster than ever, thanks to the evolution of longer legs in the few short decades since humans introduced them to their own little paradise.

...it's bewildering how the submitter could have misinterpreted the article so badly, and mystifying how the editor failed completely to catch the misinterpretation.

It's a shame that such an interesting story is derailed like this before it even gets started...the editors really do need to start reading submissions.

Re:Terrible Summary

[ceejayoz]

And that, my friends, is a beautiful first post. :-p

Re:Terrible Summary

[boggis]

Ah If only the editors had waited for my, lets face it, vastly superior story submission which took into account these facts (-8. The real story, as the parent pointed out is the slap in the fact to intelligent design advocates and their ilk when a fast reproducing species like the toad (20,000 eggs every few weeks) demonstrates evolution on a human timescale. If God's intelligently designing these faster toads the Kakadu Parks and Wildlife Service probably want a word with him.

Re:Terrible Summary

[tutori]

More crap imported from the US.

Not if they were imported in 1935...

Re:Terrible Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Great first post. Pity that it's the only one of relevance to the article, every other post simply references one of two The Simpsons episodes.

Oh well, this IS slashdot. *sigh*

Re:Terrible Summary

[cutedinochick]

"Their legs got longer because of the environment favored it, no one debates that stuff like this has and does happen." Dude, that's called evolution. Macroevolution is one aspect of it, and neither micro- nor macroevolution are completely understood. And yeah, I would think ID doesn't acknowledge microevolution. Most evolutionists, however, do not see the two as being separate, fundamentally distinct phenomena - many see macro as being lots of steps of micro added up over time. And a toad turning into a walrus is a pretty ridiculous example. Even in macroevolution there are transformational morphologies, even if the fossil record doesn't always reveal them.

Re:Terrible Summary

[BobTheLawyer]

But nobody believes that evolution works by one animal giving birth to another, completely different, animal. Evolution is about about gradual change over many thousands of years: thousands of tiny changes, over tens of thousands of generations. There are numerous examples of this in the fossil record.

If you don't accept "macro-evolution" then you must believe there is something that prevents these thousands of small changes causing significant change over geological timescale. What on earth do you think this something is?

And it's pointless asking what "ID" thinks or acknowledges: some ID proponents (e.g. Behe) accept macro-evolution and common descent but believe there are certain features which were designed. Other ID proponents seem to be nothing more than old fashioned creationists wearing new clothes.

Re:Terrible Summary

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Nearly no intelligent designer writes off evolution. They write off evolution being able to produce entirely new species altogether.

Exactly. We believe that tiny changes occur every once in a while, and that those changes could influence the survivability of an animal and increase the likeliness that the trait would survive in its offspring, and that over a couple million years, that would happen many, many, many, many, many, many times, we just don't believe any of those changes could possibly produce sexual incompatibility. That would be crazy.

Why always Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rabbits, toads, etc. Why is it always Australia that has these problems?

Timeliness?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the article says they were brought in in 1935, not exactly the peak of scientific understanding, and the problem has been known for 70 years.

Evolution?

[Black Parrot]

Wouldn't those in the vanguard have longer legs because those with longer legs put them in the vanguard?

Re:Evolution?

[Mysticalfruit]

I work with a couple of Aussies and they're seriously sharp tacks, so I'll make a broad generalization and assume that all Aussies are smart.

What you guys need is a roaming army of toad killing robots. My solution for the dead toads would be to use them as a fuel for the robots.

You'd have a mother type robot that would contain a miniture Thermal depolymerization plant that would eat toads and then burn the resulting oil to power itself. It would probably need to suppliment it's power usage with solar panels.

This mother robot would then send out smaller all terrain toad capturing robots.

Re:Evolution?

[heck]

What you guys need is a roaming army of toad killing robots. My solution for the dead toads would be to use them as a fuel for the robots.

But what happens when the robots go out of control roaming the countryside?

- John Connor

Not News, This is a Decades-Old Problem

[lorelorn]

This is not news, the toads were brought over here in the 1930s. information, yes. news, no.

I didn't bother to read the article, but the crows here have recently worked out that they can flip the toads over to kill and eat them, and avoid any toxin. As a result, crows have moved from listed pest to protected species.

Bringing the toads over was more a political decision than a scientific one. The sugar industry was crying out for a magic bullet to solve their problem, and the toad was it. The toads failed to control the pest they were supposed to eradicate, and became a major pest themselves. When cane toads move into an area, the first thing that happens is that the native frog population plummets.

The toads are spreading annually and have recently arrived in Daintree, one of the last native frog habitats we have.

Predicably, our sugar industry is still a bunch of government-subsidised whingers, and no one has yet suggested they start helping pay to control this major pest they introduced.

This is news??

[TheBrutalTruth]

Uhhh - this was made fun of by even The Simpsons almost a decade ago. Maybe the AP should watch more Discovery Channel or Animal Planet.

What was news is that the cane toads are evolving, growing longer legs (mmmm froglegs) - why wasn't that mentioned in the lead?

Let the nature take its course

[layer3switch]

There seems to be plenty of natural predators of these toads.

http://www.amonline.net.au/factsheets/canetoad.htm
"Predators of Cane Toad tadpoles in Australia include dragonfly nymphs, water beetles, Saw-shelled Turtles and Keelback Snakes. Keelbacks also eat young toads; laboratory tests have shown that they can tolerate low levels of toad toxins. Young or adult Cane Toads are eaten by wolf spiders, freshwater crayfish, Estuarine Crocodile, crows, White-faced Heron, kites, Bush Stone-curlew, Tawny Frogmouth, Water Rat and the Giant White-tailed Rat. Some predators eat only the toad's tongue, or attack its belly and eat only the mildly poisonous internal organs."

Also from this;
"Only about 0.5% of Cane Toad individuals that hatch from eggs survive to reach sexual maturity and reproduce."

It's best to let the nature deal with the 0.5% and give some time for the natural predators to neutralize the toads. It's under reported that these toads are consider NEUTRAL and not harmful pests as they are portrayed (typical over-reaction by media) because mainly they eat as much "pests" as they harm non-pests (whatever that means). The effects are over-shadowed by the human-factor ("the toad killed my dog/cat!" factor).

Lastly it contributes scientifically valuable data on evolutionary effect. It may be more valuable and important to let the nature take its course rather than outback Ausies make some holiday "wacking" these toads as some sort of past time out of this as far as the ecology of Australia is concerned.

I'm no biologist, but hell, I can see that nature is more resilient than we give it credit for.

Re:In other news...

[anothy]

ah, the good old days. before Stalin rose to power, destroyed communism, sold its soul to capitalism, power, and ambition, hunted down all the Trotskyites, demonized their ideas, and his and that fool Mao's pseudo-Communism stalled progress for half the world for a few decades, with some of it still going.