#头条创作挑战赛#
I often hear that Australian hares and kangaroos are overflowing, but I didn't expect that even toads can be infested. And what is jaw-dropping is that Australia's toads are not only huge, but also can ride snakes around, and can poison crocodiles if they don't agree with each other, which is almost invincible in this land, which makes Australians a headache. So what kind of toad can have such an impact on Australia?
What does a pound-pound toad look like?
The scientific name of this toad that is rampant in Australia is "giant sea toad", and it can also be directly called sea toad, and like the toad we know, it belongs to the amphibian reptile of the toad family Toad. But unlike the toads we know, sea toads are huge, and it is said that they can reach 10 to 17 centimeters in length and weigh about a pound.
The Guinness Book of World Records records a sea toad, which was kept as a pet in Sweden, and the length of this sea toad reached 38 centimeters, and if fully extended, it could reach 54 centimeters, and the weight also reached a staggering 2.56 kilograms. In Columbia, in the Americas, legend has it that a giant toad weighing up to 100 kilograms has been seen, but it has never been confirmed. In comparison, the toad we know is only the size of a fist, which is really pitiful.
In fact, this giant sea toad is native to South America and is not native to Australia. But in 1935, when Australian sugarcane was plagued by pests and diseases, 120 were introduced when they heard that the giant sea toad in South America had a high insecticidal efficiency. Unexpectedly, the pests on these sugarcane are all in high places, and the sea toad can only crawl on the ground, and even if it can jump, it cannot be able to catch the insects on it, so it does not play a role in eliminating pests at all.
But even if they didn't eat these pests, it didn't affect the survival of sea toads here, and they still flooded, why is that?
Why are sea toads so widespread in Australia?
Although these sea toads do not eat the pests of sugar cane, they have a very rich diet, they are not picky eaters, they eat almost anything, from insects to reptiles and small rodents, and even the local frog toad. Therefore, the introduction of sea toads in Australia not only failed to help them effectively drive away pests on sugarcane, but also brought new hidden dangers to local native organisms.
Australia's climate is hot and humid, which is very suitable for the living habits of sea toads, and there is abundant food here and natural predators are scarce, so sea toads begin to breed in large numbers.
Sea toads have a very strong reproductive ability, and they mate and lay eggs regardless of season, the number of eggs laid by female toads can reach 8,000 to 25,000 each time, but sea toads are not only very able to give birth, but their eggs are also poisonous, and the average animal does not dare to steal food, so the hatching rate of these eggs is also very high.
But what is even more exaggerated is that the eggs of sea toads not only have a high hatching rate, but also have a particularly short incubation time. Under the right water temperature, the eggs of the sea toad can hatch in just 48 hours, and no matter how slow it is, it only takes 7 days. And the hatched tadpoles can grow into young toads in just one month. However, this guy still has a long lifespan, and the average wild sea toad can live up to 10-15 years, and if it is bred in captivity, it can even reach 35 years. It is precisely because of such outrageous biological characteristics that the sea toad in Australia has become so infestinate, with 1.5 billion individuals, more than the local population.
And such a huge number of sea toads, in addition to not being able to eat food from high places, basically eat everything they can eat, and have a huge appetite, seriously destroying the local biological chain and posing a severe challenge to local natural species.
So is there really no natural predator in Australia that can restrain these sea toads? Don't Australians have the right measures to combat this phenomenon? In fact, they can think of these problems, but how can they really implement it so simple.
Why are sea toads so difficult to control?
We all know that the skin of many toads is capable of secreting venom, and sea toads are certainly no exception. The back of the sea toad can secrete milky white venom, called "toxin", compared to ordinary toads, the venom secreted by sea toads is more toxic, these toxins will attack the nervous system of animals, have a strong hallucinogenic effect, and can also cause blindness, numbness of limbs, vomiting and other symptoms, serious and even death.
Sea toads are large and venomous, making them almost overbearing in Australia. Most of the time, snakes are the natural enemies of toads, but here, sea toads dare to ride around on pythons, could it be that these toads have tamed snakes and used them as mounts?
Actually, no, this is a habit of the toad, whenever it is the breeding season, the male toad will attach to the back of the female toad and firmly hold the female toad's abdomen with his forelimbs, in this way to stimulate the female to ovulate.
But sometimes they can't find the female toad, so they hug other animals, such as the carp, and the male toad will hug the carp's face tightly, and even insert his forelimbs into the carp's eyes, so that the carp can't get rid of it, and then there is the idiom "golden toad hugging carp". So in Australia, the sea toad rides on the python for this reason.
What makes the python angry is that not only can't get rid of these annoying creatures, but it can't bite them or eat them, because the poison of these sea toads can also kill the python. Even the crocodiles wanted to use these sea toads as food, but they were also poisoned, and not only did they not eat them, but they were killed by their own food.
However, even more pitiful are those dogs, driven by curiosity, dogs often lick everywhere, even ugly sea toads they want to try, but it is just such a lick, so that the dog has become dependent, that is, addicted to drugs. Addicted dogs are immersed in hallucinations all day long, and when they wake up, they continue to lick them, and although these toxins can bring them temporary pleasure, once the toxins accumulate in their bodies, they will die of heart failure. In order to help dogs quit drug addiction, Australia has also set up a dog drug rehabilitation center, they squeezed some mustard on the toad model, and then let the dog go to the sweets, the stimulating taste makes the dog unable to swallow, after repeating, the dog will have a rejection of the toad, even if you see it on the road in the future, you will avoid it.
In fact, sea toads are not without natural predators in Australia, according to research, 15% of more than 3,000 species of snakes will prey on sea toads. There is also a species of Australian water rat, which will tear open the belly of the sea toad and eat the internal organs and limbs, and the reason why they attack the belly is because the venom of the sea toad is on the back, and attacking its belly can avoid the venom.
Then there are crows that can also prey on sea toads, they seem to know which part of the sea toad is poisonous and which part is not, and then they will avoid the poisonous part, start from the stomach that is not poisonous, and eat the sea toad little by little. When the locals found out about these things, they finally saw some hope, but the sea toads were so large and reproduced so fast that they were only tiny of water rats and crows.
Sea toads are almost invincible by virtue of their own toxins, so it is completely impossible to just use the food chain to restrain them, so as a last resort, humans are also involved.
Australian Toad Wars!
Australia is a great plain, and sea toads live here without hindrance, not only moving within the natural environment, but also running in groups on the road or running to residential areas, causing serious problems for the locals. So some people drive straight over the sea toad without blinking an eye.
In order to eradicate the sea toad, the local government has also tried all kinds of methods, such as a heavy reward, so that people can freeze to death at low temperature or euthanasia after being caught, the reason why they choose euthanasia is because the government does not want residents to kill sea toads on the street in order to vent their personal anger, which on the one hand looks very bloody and inhumane, and on the other hand, it will make the streets full of corpses and affect the environment.
However, everyone knows that sea toads are very poisonous, and if you accidentally lose your life in order to make that money, it is really not worth it. Then there were sea toad catching activities in the local area, but at the end of the year, tens of thousands of them were caught, and it had no effect.
Seeing this, presumably the Chinese will not be able to sit still, if in the land of China, as long as the policy is liberalized, there will be no animal flooding, even if it is a frog and toad, in the end it can safely become a delicacy.
For example, toads are a traditional Chinese medicine in China, especially the skin that sheds from their bodies, which is even more rare. And the venom on the toad was also collected by us to make "toad crisp". After peeling off the skin, the internal organs and poisonous glands of the toad are removed, and the remaining parts are full of muscles, and after washing and cooking, it is another delicacy. So can Australians learn from us in the face of the problem of sea toads?
In fact, it is also difficult, because the poison of sea toads is much stronger than that of ordinary toads, and it is also addictive, no one dares to risk really making this venom into edible toads, and in the face of such dangerous creatures, no one really dares to make them as food to eat, so our set will not work for them.
However, on the whole, in fact, Australia is not unable to eliminate these sea toads, but they have thought too much about things, while thinking about eliminating sea toads, and on the other hand, they are still thinking about humanitarianism, processing sea toads into commodities and selling them, and they are afraid that the toxicity is too strong to control, and finally they have been wavering, so sea toads will become more and more widespread.
From this case, we can also draw a conclusion, that is, do not introduce new species randomly, if you can't control it, it will cause a disaster, and there will be no end.