The Toads Go Marching Two By Two Harrah! Harrah!!

[Comrade Tortoise]

IF A toxic toad invading your backyard is bad, a toxic toad with long legs has got to be worse. Cane toads, the poisonous, invasive pests that have caused mayhem in Australia, are evolving longer legs, enabling them to hop further and invade new territory faster.

After being introduced to Queensland in 1935 to control sugar-cane pests, the toads quickly moved outside their remit, and began preying on and outcompeting native species. Rick Shine and colleagues at the University of Sydney studied toads at the invasion front in Northern Territory, 60 kilometres east of Darwin. They found that those in the vanguard of the invasion had hind legs that were on average 45 per cent of their body length. After a year, the average at the same site had dropped to about 40 per cent, as the invasion front moved on and shorter-legged toads caught up. Measurements going back 60 years show that relative leg length has increased, as has the rate at which toads invade new areas (Nature, vol 439, p 803).

Longer legs make for a faster toad. Over three days, the invasion-front toads travelled about 500 metres further than the shorter-legged stragglers. The advantage for these toads is access to fresh territory with a good food supply and less competition, which could be the factor driving selection for longer legs, Shine says.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/lif ... 925394.700

[Charon]

This calls for napalm strikes to quell the Xeno uprising!

*cough*

Err, well there we go. Evolution in action. That's still bad though as the toads are huge and are going to be eating through everything on their path to toady conquest.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Not only will they be eating through everything in their path, but they are pretty much immune to predation. The toxins in their skin are powerful enough to kill humans and IIRC small crocodiles. Only one species of snake can handle them, and they can only deal with little ones.

[Mayabird]

Not only will they be eating through everything in their path, but they are pretty much immune to predation. The toxins in their skin are powerful enough to kill humans and IIRC small crocodiles. Only one species of snake can handle them, and they can only deal with little ones.

So, how can they be killed? We could probably shoot them and trap them. Would smoke and fumes coming off their burning corpses be toxic? The little buggers are probably resistant to chytridimycosis and pesticides too, aren't they?

[Narsil]

I'd say that the best way to stop a Toxic Toad is to use electricity...

Something like stun-guns should kill them pretty easily, as the skin-toxins are liquid, and can probably conduct electricity quite well, thus leading to them all being fried alive.

[B4UTRUST]

Napalm sticks to frogs

[Narsil]

Napalm sticks to frogs

On an unrelated note:

We Brits call French people 'frogs', because of a certain 'delicacy'

[Comrade Tortoise]

problem is, they are fairly well established( having been in Australia since the 30s), and it is really hard to trap the fuckers.

There is pretty much no way, that I can tell, to stop them.