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The Cane Toad
Interesting Creature…
By Shervin Belgrave
This week’s interesting creature, the Cane Toad, is a scary-looking and deadly animal that got its name from cane farmers.
Adult Cane toads
Tadpoles
The scientific name of the Cane Toad is Rhinella Marina, and it is native to Guyana and other South American countries. These toads can also be found in Central America and even Australia. The common name of the species is derived from its use against the cane beetle (Dermolepida albohirtum), which damages sugarcane.
It is said that cane farmers introduced the toad to the Caribbean, Australia, and many other regions in the pacific, as a form of pest control because of their voracious appetite for Cane Beetles.
Cane Beetles destroy cane crops and the cane toads are an excellent predator of cane beetles. Though cane crops thrived as a result of the introduction of this most efficient predator, Cane Toads became a threat to other native animals. The cane toad is now considered a pest and an invasive species in many of its introduced regions.
Although relatively small to large mammals, Cane Toads have a secret weapon that can kill even humans.
The cane toad has poison glands about its body, and their tadpoles are highly toxic to most animals if ingested. Its toxic skin can kill many animals, both wild and domesticated, and they are particularly dangerous to dogs.
The poisonous glands are located in the skin of adult toads and behind the eyes. When threatened, its glands secrete a milky-white fluid known as bufotoxin.
Components of bufotoxin are toxic to many animals. Human deaths have been recorded due to the consumption of cane toads.
Dogs are especially prone to be poisoned by licking or biting toads.
Poisoned pets would show excessive drooling, extremely red gums, head-shaking, watery eyes, loss of coordination, and convulsions.
In addition to releasing toxins, the cane toad is capable of inflating its lungs, puffing up, and lifting its body off the ground to appear taller and larger to a potential predator.
Cane toads are also fierce predators themselves. Unlike other frogs that identify small prey by movement, the Cane Toad uses its sharp vision and its keen sense of smell to detect prey.
In addition to the normal prey of small rodents, other small mammals, reptiles, small birds, and even bats, the Cane Toad feeds on a range of invertebrates, such as ants, beetles, earwigs, dragonflies, grasshoppers, true bugs, crustaceans, and gastropods. They also have a taste for species of plants, household refuse and pet food.
Cane Toads are prolific breeders; females lay single-clump spawns with thousands of eggs.
A female lays 8,000 to 25,000 eggs at once and the strings can stretch up to 20 meters in length. The egg grows into tadpoles which typically hatch within 48 hours, but the period can vary from 14 hours to almost a week.
This process usually involves thousands of tadpoles—which are small, black, and have short tails—forming into groups.
Tadpoles develop into juveniles, between 12 and 60 days. Very few, however, make it to adulthood because of predators and cannibalism.
Adults can grow up to an average of four to six inches in length. The largest Cane Toad grew up to 9.4 inches in length.
Source of information (Cane toad – Wikipedia)
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