"Mom, they're licking toads, that's right, it's toads, I'm going home!" On the screen, a well-behaved American man is on the phone, and someone posted this screenshot with imaginary lines on social media platforms.
Recently, news about Americans' enthusiasm for licking toads has become a topic of interest. Such news surfaced because of an announcement issued by the National Park Service a few days ago: If you see a toad with green eyes glowing by a pond in the dead of night, please don't lick it!
The announcement is interestingly written, and it is accompanied by pictures and captions: voila! The big Colorado toad in the park of Arizona is staring at you!
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Mike, a 32-year-old who lives in Hamburg, eastern Pennsylvania, works on railroads and, like many young people, likes to pursue something new and exciting outside of work, such as watching the ball, but licking toads is still too incredible for him.
He told the "Morning News" reporter: "Things like licking toads seem to have only been seen in cartoons in the past, and there are related plots in "The Simpsons" and "House of Spoofs", but in real life, I have never heard of friends around me trying this behavior, we just take it as a joke." ”
The New York Times and The Washington Post have recently reported on the news, calling on people not to sneak into parks late at night to lick toads, the Colorado River toad, also known as the Sonoran desert toad.
The reason why someone wants to lick it is because the toad secretes a venom on the parotid gland behind the ear when frightened or dangerous, and when other animals or humans suck or lick this venom, it will produce a brief but intense hallucination.
This hallucination can be described as "drunken dream death", and former boxing champion Tyson and US President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden have praised this feeling, because they are also avid toad licking lovers.
"This experience released my long-hidden feelings and hurts, and it acted as an ointment," Hunter Biden wrote in his memoirs.
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This noble prince known for his unscrupulous work and indulgence actively advocated the "curative effect" of licking toads, which partly contributed to the popularity of this kind of confusion among some Americans, especially young people. In order to satisfy the desire for curiosity and the excitement of chasing, young people in some states in the southwestern United States take advantage of the dark night wind to sneak into the local national park, they take flashlights, walk the dark path, and search for big toads with green lights in their eyes.
The New York Times reported that Sonoran desert toads are mainly distributed in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, and in the biological chain of nature, they were originally the prey of raccoons and other animals, but now they have become the target of human poaching, overfishing and illegal trade.
In fact, the young people who sneak into the park are not trying to bring the toad home, they may just hold it in their hands, tap their belly, let it instinctively initiate an emergency response, and then secrete hallucinogenic venom on their heads and backs, and when they happily lick the venom, they will release the toads in their hands.
"It's disgusting to think about, these toads are said to be 7 inches long (about 18 centimeters), and I'm sure they don't look much better than other toads," Mike exclaimed, holding the toads with both hands. "It is estimated that the toads are also frightened, and they have never been so flattered in their lives."
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It is not yet known how many idle people wander the national park late at night just to lick the toads. The Washington Post reported that there is no data to prove that this behavior can be called widespread locally. However, this subculture trend must be stopped, because licking toad venom can be hallucinogenic and fatal, and the latter half of the sentence is the part that Hunter Biden and Tyson have no time to mention or refuse to mention.
The Langhorne Rehabilitation Center in Pennsylvania wrote on its website that just as kissing a frog will not make it a prince, the pleasure of licking a toad is only illusory or even dangerous, and even many animals have realized that these toads are harmful and try to avoid them, but they did not expect that the level of human cognition has "improved" to a completely different direction.
The article also lists the results of licking Sonoran desert toads in order of lightest to heavy: hallucinations-pleasure-nausea-anxiety-muscle weakness-cardiovascular failure-brain disease-death.
James Lark, a psychiatrist at King's College London, told The Washington Post that many hedonistic and addictive dogs have learned the lesson, and after licking the toad, these adult dogs show symptoms of constant drooling and irregular heartbeat.
In the 30s of the last century, Australia's sugar cane fields were infested with beetles, in order to eliminate the beetles, the country introduced more than 100 giant toads from the United States, and in less than a few years, more than a hundred have multiplied into more than a billion, and now they are all over the place, including the highly toxic Sonoran desert toad, which has also become a favorite of local addicts, and dogs who do not know why are also addicted. Tommy, the attending physician of a pet drug rehabilitation center in Queensland, said that dogs addicted to licking toad poisoning not only drool, but also scratch the wall, just like they have mental illness, they will be depressed, dementia, and even forget their owners, because their nervous systems have suffered irreversible damage, and some dogs have been killed.
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Toad venom is contraband in many countries, government agencies and scientists are also sparing no effort to popularize knowledge to the public, calling on people to resist temptation, restrain impulses, cherish health, cherish life, but in the United States national parks, there are still many people desperate, looking for fun, on social media platforms, there are also many people ignore the warnings of scientists, mocking the National Park Service's "fuss".
Someone replied under the Washington Post account: Come on, the National Park Service posted notices mostly to make people laugh, but you take it as a serious warning. Others say that this is typical of excessive government intervention.
Of course, there are those who do not question the harmfulness of such acts, but they criticize the practices of US government agencies and mainstream media from another angle. For example, on NBC's social media account, someone replied: If you don't want people to lick hallucinogenic toads, you shouldn't tell people about the existence of hallucinogenic toads and toad licking.
Instead, a netizen named Bob Smalser succinctly put forward a deafening point: Let Darwin come out and explain!
"This view is indeed interesting, let the theory of evolution explain this absurd phenomenon, maybe this is the embodiment of the overall 'dementia' of American society that we see today." Mike said with emotion, "Human beings are in awe of nature in the uncivilized stage, but with the evolution of civilization, they have returned to primitiveness and barbarism, which is the opposite of the extreme of things brought about by doing whatever you want, I think." ”