Showing posts with label toads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toads. Show all posts

Frogs Get Rid of Foreign Objects Through Their Bladder - Weird

Have you heard of the person who got part of a needle stuck in his hand and it came out 10 years later through his foot? Strange things like this do happen. It is the body's way of safely ridding the body of potentially dangerous objects. Work on Australian frogs show they deal with such things in a different way.

Tiny bead-like radio transmitters were implanted into frogs. They were put into body cavities of frogs and even toads. Oddly, the small devices disappeared. The beads moved along the body into the bladder where they were, in due course, fully expelled from the body.

This may sound like something quite obvious and unremarkable until one is informed that the beads were two centimeters long and some of the frogs were only eight centimeters long. It is no mean feat for such a small animal. It was discovered that tissue from the bladder grows out and envelopes the foreign object. The object is then drawn into the bladder.

Apparently, frogs have evolved this to rid their bodies of the sharp extremities and extrusions of insects, their main diet. Furthermore, frogs have thin skin and they hop, landing clumsily. Thus, thorns from plants can easily pierce their bodies.

Researchers had assumed that when a transmitter was no longer mobile, the host animal was dead. Now they will have to find out if the transmitter was naturally expelled.
Economics by Ty Buchanan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
     Australian Blog★                         
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)


Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Cane Toads Go Where They Want

The toads cannot be stopped - cane toads that is. Some do-gooders are pressing the United Nations to act to stop the vermin from moving in to the Northern Territory and Western Australia. This won't do any good, Territories, states and the Federal Government have given up already. Even annual kills have not reduced the population one iota.

Because the pests are moving into the Purnululu National Park, the Wilderness Society is pressing the World Heritage Center in Paris to take action. The Australian Authorities would welcome any extra funding they can get, but it is common knowledge that nothing can be done. World Heritage rules hold states, territories and national governments responsible to control pests in protected parks. In this instance it would be foolish for legal action to ensue. Trapping and fencing will not work.

Australian laboratories are working on a biological control mechanism. Other countries with similar problems are working on a similar solution. Until an answer is found the little varmints will just go where they please.  A test that has worked is fencing off water holes, but this also prevents access by animal stock as well.
Conservation by Ty Buchanan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
     Australian Blog★                         
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Death Adders Are Causing Their Own Extinction

Australia's death adder is contributing to its own extinction. Moving around to hunt their prey is not their method. An adder tempts its victims by laying in ambush and wiggling its tail tip. By wiggling its tail, however, it is noticed by cane toads, frogs and lizards who eagerly gulp down the tasty meal.

After cane toads were introduced into Australia death adder numbers plummeted. Ironically as the cane toad attacks the snake it is bitten, so after its meal the cane toad dies - mutual suicide. Even if the snake eats the toad it will end up dead because cane toads are poisonous.

For millions of years death adders have survived by enticing their prey within easy reach. Now this behavior is leading to their demise. Man cannot intervene to prevent this. There is nothing that can be done.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Wildlife
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Cane Toads Are Killing off Saltwater Crocodiles

You Don't have to be big to kill a crocodile. A small imported pest can kill one. Cane toads are in plague proportions in the Northern Territory.

Cane toads have poisonous sacks on their heads. When a saltwater crocodile eats one assuming it to be a tasty snack the crocodile ingests the poison and dies.

The problem is so serious that the population has fallen by half in some areas. Because the species takes a long time to breed up numbers, the crocodiles could become very scarce in some regions.

Introducing cane toads was a great mistake by Australian scientists. They were brought in to combat beetles destroying sugar crops in 1935. But the toads ignored the beetles and now threaten many native species by eating what they eat. To travel faster around the country some toads have developed larger hind legs to cover a greater distance before the sun goes down.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Society
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Strange Events Continue Around the World

Raising the ire of scientists, mysteries continue to happen. A year ago people in Arkansas experienced an omen for the new year. Thousands of redwing blackbirds fell from the sky, dead. Investigators came to the odd conclusion that fireworks scared them to death. Apparently they flew around blindly in the night, crashing into the walls of buildings.

In Altona, Germany, a large number of toads were found dead in a strange way. They had holes in their backs and their livers had been removed. It was concluded that crows had developed a way of getting at the nutritious livers without consuming poison from the toads. Taking the "myth" a little further "experts" said with livers removed the toads' lungs had inflated causing them to explode. Darn clever these scientists. They always have an answer.

They do seem to get some things right, however. In Alaska 55 musk oxen were frozen to death despite having two layers of fur. A tidal surge followed a storm at sea which cracked the frozen ice and the oxen fell into the freezing ocean. Surface sea water later refroze around the dead animals.

Odd events continue around the world with seabirds washing up dead on California beaches and swarms of ladybirds in Colorado.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Science
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )