The story of the Cane Toad in Australia

[Konovalov]

A mate of mine back in Oz emailed this little movie to me. A real laugh this one. :lol:

http://www.cane-toad.com/movie.php

Sadly the reality is that this introduced species has become a national pest and a threat to many native species of animals in Australia. Not to mention they are the most ugly and vile creatures that I have ever come across. Up in Queensland killing Cane Toads has almost become a sport.

[lesrae]

Any relation to the camel toad (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/lesrae/cameltoads.jpg)?

[snowsub]

And as they said (on the web-site link), I've done most of the types of killing, and heaps not on the list, you can temporarily remove a population from a area (5 acres in my case) but they will come back.

So-far only 2 aminals in Aust have been able to hunt canetoads, a snake that resists it's poison and crows that have learnt to flip the toads over and eat them thus avoiding the poison glands.

I'm now not so religious in killing them and I don't see anyway humans will get rid of them.
Since they are now incroaching into Kakadu National Park that'll mean alot of species deaths, especially frogs cause they eat them, where there are canetoads there are no frogs!

Australaia would be a great place if the popuilations of european introduced species were removed.

[bradclark1]

I think just about all countries have problems bordering on calamity with knowingly introduced, and unknowingly introduced species of plants and wildlife.

[mog]

I've tried the golf club method a few times while holidaying at Byron Bay. A 3 or 4 iron seems to be best, as using a wood risks splattering the toad on contact.

I don't know if we'll ever get rid of the cane toad, but maybe we can cull them for a few years at a time with specially engineered diseases. Mixamytosis seemed to give us a decent respite from the rabbit plague.

[snowsub]

That reminds me, what's happened with that new engineered desease they made in SA for rabbits?
All talk when it was happening but I heaven't heard anything since. :hmm:

[TteFAboB]

You Aussies are lucky you are an Island, no matter how bad things go, New Zealand will be relatively safe, same for Indonesia, of course you could affect aerial migrating species, but no matter how hard you try, you can't send them an invasion of cane toads.

On land continents it's a different matter, a few decades ago someone had the bright idea of cross-breeding African Bees with the European Bee, the European Bee is a cute little buzzing honey thing, it's harmless, but they don't produce nearly as much honey as the African Bees, the latter, however, are aggressive miniature beasts, they have a painfull sting, they don't like you, and enough of them could kill a human, their purpose in life is to breed and spread as much as they can.

The increased honey was overshadowed by these prevailing qualities and the experiment was abandoned, yes, abandoned, it wasn't an industrial-scale controled experiment, it was an Amateur backyard Get-rich-quick scheme, that failed, but the African Bees saw it as a success.

They were now free, and continued to reproduce unharmed, that evil man who used to steal their honey was now gone, they were only limited by the available food and the closest natural predator was many nautical miles away.

Their population increased in the wild and they started migrating, slowly building new hives heading to the North, they left the borders and contaminated other countries, and so they continued their walk North establishing colonies in every country in its path of Doom untill eventually they reached the southern region of the USA.

One man managed to create this abomination, behold the power a single human holds in his hands, unlike Toads you can't use golf clubs against a hive of African Bees, before you get close enough you will get stinged in the eyes, nose, mouth and ear, they attack the face first.

But those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, aren't they, and so it happened again, this time another brilliant man decided to create some kind of Asian Snail for culinary escargot, it didn't worked, he didn't sell any decent amount of them, there was little demand really and another backyard production site was abandoned. Once again this new species found a rich enviroment to reproduce its population unnopposed, without any natural predator the snails conquered the little town they were brought to and they also managed to get infected by a disease which can affect humans aswell, and so people started getting sick, there are even some deaths, once again, one man is held responsable for all of this, when you think of a tyrant you usually think of Hitler or Stalin, but it's the small tyrants who are the true bastards, as they go unoticed, unpunished and nobody cares about his victims.

So, as any Australian can imagine, today that little village fills bucket loads of snails on a daily basis to incinerate, and even still they are spreading to the other nearby towns, again you cannot use a golf club because if you splatter the thing in your skin, hands or face you could get sick.

The solution to both of these problems, at the beginning when they were all in the same place, was another simple display of mankind power:

http://www.secretarmies.com/images/day_flame.jpg

[Kalach]

We've had heavy rain up here in Cairns (the top NE part of Australia) and there are litteraly hundreds of toads about :o .
I would try to fend them off with a golf club (a cricket bat would be more Australian though...) but I don't want to get that close to the things :-?
If there were one legitament reason for relaxing gun control laws here, it would be for the toad hunting :yep: .
I've tried with a bow, but I don't have hunting arrows and the more blunt 'practice arrows' bounce right off them :damn:

[snowsub]

Grab a machete and let loose.
(For that Out of Africe feeling)

Another good one is filling their mouths with Gunpowder and lightin it up, instant "puff the magic dragon"

Another is grabbing the foaming hair product with the "tube" nossel and bloating them.

The worst I've seam is litterally cutting their heart out and letting them go, they last about 30-45 secs then croak it.

Or fill a cardboard box with them and shooting into it with a sir/slug gun.

You could always "nail" them to a cross and leave them there...

Problem is you can never get rid of the buggers, they just keep on coming back :doh:

just a note to the viewers, that I'm aware how bad those things sound, they were done by a much younger me and I do not condone them anymore, it's just the alcohol talking lol