A big warty, brown, ugly cane toad just sitting in the dirt.
It weighs 2.7kg - 6lb and is 25cm - 10" long
It looked like a plastic toy toad. A football with legs.
A cane toad that size will eat anything it can fit into its mouth, and that includes insects, reptiles, and small mammals.
Cane toads are highly toxic invasive pests that can kill numerous Australian native predators—including quolls, goannas, snakes, and crocodiles by releasing a deadly poison bufotoxin from their glands when bitten or eaten.
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Ugh … not the prettiest thing is it.
Is it indigenous or did someone introduce it to control a pest and it became one itself?
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Another introduced species to Australia, brought in from Hawaii in the 30s to control sugar cane pests. That experiment failed to control the beetles and as such became a widespread pest themselves, poisoning native predators with their toxins and causing massive ecological disruption, especially in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
100 toads were brought to Australia. There are now an estimated 200 million of them. They have no natural enemies. The sugar cane beetles the toads were brought here to eradicate are thriving.
They have spread as far south as Bankstown, southwest of Sydney, invaded Kakadu National Park and gone westward to Broome in Western Australia.
A totally failed experiment that will decimate the natural order of the animal kingdom in Australia.
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