Thursday, June 14, 2012

Cane Toad Toxin To Be Used Against Cane Toad Tadpoles

Fascinating:
Well it turns out that the toads' poison is sort of the major chemical signal that cane toad tadpoles use to find out that another cane toad has laid eggs in the pond. And they come racing across to try to find these new eggs to kill them so that they don't have any competitors. So that if we put that secretion in a trap, a funnel trap, a minnow trap, we catch tens of thousands of cane toad tadpoles very, very quickly. And the beauty of it is that the native tadpoles are repelled by this chemical and so they go in the other direction.
You can listen to the ABC show on this here.

Full cane toad invasion story here.

Pic from here.

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