Using the cane toad’s poison against itself

An effective new weapon in the fight against the spread of cane toads has been developed by the University of Sydney, in collaboration with the University of Queensland. "This is the first powerful tool we have created to control cane toads," said Professor Rick Shine , from the University's School of Biological Sciences and the lead author of the study which is published in the Proceedings of Royal Society B on Wednesday 13 June. The new research shows that the same powerful poisons cane toads use to devastate native species can be used as a weapon against the toads themselves - by using the poison as 'bait' in traps set in waterbodies to catch toad tadpoles. "A chemical 'bait' created from the toads' poison is a real magnet for toad tadpoles," Professor Shine said. The biggest obstacle to getting rid of cane toads is that a single clutch (the amount of eggs laid at a time by one female) can contain more than 30,000 eggs. "This means that even if you catch and kill 99 percent of the adult toads in an area, the few that are left can produce so many offspring that before you know it you are back to where you started - just as many cane toads as ever," Professor Shine said. The only way around the problem is to stop the toads from reproducing, Professor Shine explains.