ODE TO A TOAD
Australia has one of the largest sugar cane industries in the
world, so it was judged to be a disaster when, in the 1930's,
the sugar cane beetle began munching its way through the sugar
crop.
Scientists were asked by the Australian government to come up
with a plan to eradicate the beetle. They put their heads
together, did some research and found that the brown toad in
Hawaii, called Bufo marinus, would be the way to go. It was
known to have poisonous glands on its face, and, so the
thinking went, if toads caught the beetles, they would be
killed.
So a mass importation of brown toads, newly called cane toads,
was organised. They were set free in the canefields of
Queensland and proceeded to breed - ferociously.
Quite soon it became apparent that the toads were not
performing as the scientists had predicted they would. Their
numbers were increasing exponentially - each female laid
thousands of eggs several times a year.
But what the learned scientists had not taken into account was
that beetles have wings, and therefore can - and do - fly! So
the beetles easily avoided the cane toads by flying into the
blue yonder.
Smart scientists. Much maligned cane toads - they did not ask
to be transported Down Under!
Jan Smark Nilsson
