Cat food unleashed in latest ploy to get rid of the cane toad
Source: Agencies |
February 20, 2010, Saturday
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FORGET cricket bats, golf clubs and carbon dioxide. Australia has a new weapon in its war on the dreaded cane toad: cat food.
Researchers at the University of Sydney found that a few tablespoons of cat food left next to ponds in the Northern Territory attracted fierce Australian meat ants, which then attack baby cane toads as they emerge from the water. The results of the study were published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology this week.
It is the latest weapon in Australia's seemingly endless battle against the cane toad, which was introduced from Hawaii in 1935 in an unsuccessful attempt to control beetles on sugarcane plantations.
The toads bred rapidly, and their millions-strong population now threatens many species across Australia.
Early killing methods included whacking the creatures with golf clubs or cricket bats. In recent years, most groups dedicated to fighting the pests have turned to freezing or gassing them with carbon dioxide. Still, the population continues to explode.
Cane toads emit a poison that attacks the heart of would-be predators. But the researchers found that meat ants were impervious to the toads' poison, said Rick Shine, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Sydney who supervised the research.
"A single toad can have 30,000 eggs in a clutch, so there's a heck of a lot of tadpoles turning into toads along the edge of a billabong," he said.
Between July and September 2008, researchers studied tens of thousands of cane toads emerging from cat food-lined ponds and found that 98 percent of them were attacked by meat ants within two minutes. Of those that escaped, 80 percent died within a day.
The baby toads are less than a centimeter in size, about the same as a meat ant. The ants have strong jaws and can kill larger animals by sheer numbers.
"It's a pretty unequal fight," Shine said. "The toads have this terribly stupid response to attack -- which is just to freeze and do nothing."
Graeme Sawyer, of Frogwatch, a group dedicated to wiping out the toxic amphibian, said: "The impact of meat ants on cane toads can be significant with a small number of cane toads, but when you get areas where there are large number of cane toads it doesn't seem to make any difference at all."
Australia's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said encouraging ants to attack cane toads was inhumane.
Researchers at the University of Sydney found that a few tablespoons of cat food left next to ponds in the Northern Territory attracted fierce Australian meat ants, which then attack baby cane toads as they emerge from the water. The results of the study were published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology this week.
It is the latest weapon in Australia's seemingly endless battle against the cane toad, which was introduced from Hawaii in 1935 in an unsuccessful attempt to control beetles on sugarcane plantations.
The toads bred rapidly, and their millions-strong population now threatens many species across Australia.
Early killing methods included whacking the creatures with golf clubs or cricket bats. In recent years, most groups dedicated to fighting the pests have turned to freezing or gassing them with carbon dioxide. Still, the population continues to explode.
Cane toads emit a poison that attacks the heart of would-be predators. But the researchers found that meat ants were impervious to the toads' poison, said Rick Shine, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Sydney who supervised the research.
"A single toad can have 30,000 eggs in a clutch, so there's a heck of a lot of tadpoles turning into toads along the edge of a billabong," he said.
Between July and September 2008, researchers studied tens of thousands of cane toads emerging from cat food-lined ponds and found that 98 percent of them were attacked by meat ants within two minutes. Of those that escaped, 80 percent died within a day.
The baby toads are less than a centimeter in size, about the same as a meat ant. The ants have strong jaws and can kill larger animals by sheer numbers.
"It's a pretty unequal fight," Shine said. "The toads have this terribly stupid response to attack -- which is just to freeze and do nothing."
Graeme Sawyer, of Frogwatch, a group dedicated to wiping out the toxic amphibian, said: "The impact of meat ants on cane toads can be significant with a small number of cane toads, but when you get areas where there are large number of cane toads it doesn't seem to make any difference at all."
Australia's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said encouraging ants to attack cane toads was inhumane.
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