AN OUTBREAK of exploding toads is perplexing the residents of Hamburg. The affected creatures seem to behave quite normally, croaking and languidly snapping up flies. Suddenly, after nightfall, they start to balloon to more than three times their normal size and can barely crawl before popping. Their entrails are expelled distances of up to one metre.
Thousands of the green amphibians have died this way. “It is a deeply shocking sight,” said Werner Smolnik, a leading activist from the Nabu environmental protection group.
A meeting of wildlife experts has been summoned to explain the phenomenon, which has occurred near a lake in a fashionable part of the city. Tabloid newspapers have already called it the “Pond of Death.”
Dogs and children have been warned away. The force of the explosions is impressive. “It’s like hitting a slightly rotten orange with a golf iron,” one Green activist explained yesterday.
Heidi Mayerhofer, a biologist who has been called in to find an answer to the riddle, said: “The worst thing is that they’re not dead immediately. They have to fight for their lives for minutes on end despite the fact that their entrails have been shot across the park.”
The experts’ main concern is that the illness could spread. “We cannot exclude some possibility of humans being infected,” Herr Smolnik said. Water samples from the lake have been taken for analysis but no obvious bacteria or deadly pollution seems to be present in the water.
Other explanations are a virus or a new breed of aggressive crows. The birds have been seen attacking toads and one theory is that the toads swell up as a defence mechanism which then gets out of control. Alternatively, the toads could be committing suicide in order to protect the toad community as a whole. Attacks by crows have certainly diminished since the toads started to blow themselves up.
Germans are particularly attached to toads and they have become, in some respects, a symbol of the Green movement. The Government has allocated £153,000 for toad tunnels underneath roads to protect the animals from traffic.
Toads in an area of northern Germany are being killed off by a mysterious disease - they are exploding.
Thousands of the amphibians have died in recent days in a pond in Hamburg's Altona district, with their bodies swelling to bursting point.
The toads' entrails are propelled for up to a metre (3.2ft), in scenes that have been likened to science fiction.
Scientists are baffled. Possible explanations include a unknown virus or a fungus in the pond.
"You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding," German conservationist Werner Smolnik told AFP news agency.
The bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size, he said.
"I have never seen such a thing," AFP quotes veterinarian Otto Horst as saying. The site - which has been dubbed "the pond of death" - has been closed to the public.
The exploding toads have also crossed the border north into Denmark, according to Danish Radio.
It reported that a large number of toads that live in a pond near Laasby in central Jutland have started to suffer the same fate as the German amphibians.
The toads crawl onto the land, swell up and explode in the middle of the night, the radio said.
_________________ Unfortunately, at the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the Flower Children jerked off and went back to sleep.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:19 pm Posts: 39068 Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA Gender: Male
Oh cmon! No one videotaped this????
_________________ "Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest." - e.v.
April 29, 2005
TOADS have been exploding by the hundred in Germany because they are being attacked by crows, a veterinary surgeon said.
Animal welfare workers and veterinarians had reported that as many as 1,000 toads had swelled to bursting point and exploded in recent days, propelling their entrails up to a metre into the air.
Now a veterinary surgeon, Frank Mutschmann, who has examined the remains of the toads, said they had been pierced with a single peck by crows trying to eat their livers.
This in turn caused the toads to explode.
"The toads swell up as a form of self-defence. But when their livers are taken away and their stomachs are punctured, their blood vessels explode, their lungs collapse and the other organs come out," Mutschmann said.
"Crows are intelligent animals. They learn very quickly how to eat the toads' livers," he said, adding that between three and five crows could kill around 100 toads.
So many toads have died in a lake in the Altona district of Hamburg that it has been dubbed "the pond of death".
_________________ When the last living thing Has died on account of us, How poetical it would be If Earth could say, In a voice floating up Perhaps From the floor Of the Grand Canyon, "It is done. People did not like it here.''
April 29, 2005 TOADS have been exploding by the hundred in Germany because they are being attacked by crows, a veterinary surgeon said.
Animal welfare workers and veterinarians had reported that as many as 1,000 toads had swelled to bursting point and exploded in recent days, propelling their entrails up to a metre into the air.
Now a veterinary surgeon, Frank Mutschmann, who has examined the remains of the toads, said they had been pierced with a single peck by crows trying to eat their livers.
This in turn caused the toads to explode.
"The toads swell up as a form of self-defence. But when their livers are taken away and their stomachs are punctured, their blood vessels explode, their lungs collapse and the other organs come out," Mutschmann said.
"Crows are intelligent animals. They learn very quickly how to eat the toads' livers," he said, adding that between three and five crows could kill around 100 toads.
So many toads have died in a lake in the Altona district of Hamburg that it has been dubbed "the pond of death".
I just noticed the date on that article...weird.
_________________ When the last living thing Has died on account of us, How poetical it would be If Earth could say, In a voice floating up Perhaps From the floor Of the Grand Canyon, "It is done. People did not like it here.''
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:19 pm Posts: 39068 Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA Gender: Male
PJinmyhead wrote:
Those toads should have seen Hitchock's The Birds.
If those crows had been in it, the movie might have been more like this:
_________________ "Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest." - e.v.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:19 pm Posts: 39068 Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA Gender: Male
PJinmyhead wrote:
PJinmyhead wrote:
Is is ironic that the action that killed the birds is the one they used to protect themselves.
of course I meant the action that killed the toads. sorry
Why didn't you just edit?
_________________ "Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest." - e.v.
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I wish every cane toad in the country would explode. That would solve a lot of problems for us.