Lessons From Nature

Whooping like a cowboy, Bruce zigzagged his 4x4 through the Queensland dusk. On the road behind him – carnage. Scores of squished and warty bodies. Toads, dead and dying, up to 10 inches long, mottled yellow and brown and red, packed with poison.

Bruce didn’t enjoy taking life – not usually – indeed his farmer friends sometimes joshed him about being squeamish. But cane toads were an exception. They brought out an unsuspected violent streak in Bruce. Hard to blame him – two of his dogs had died from licking the toads’ toxic skin, and neighbours told of fatally tainted drinking troughs.
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Bufo marinus, dubbed cane toad in Australia, is one of the few amphibians and reptiles to become naturalised around the world. It has certainly been the most destructive. A four-legged venom factory, it menaces all sorts of creatures – its predators as well as its prey – and is lethal even when dead.

In 1935, Queensland’s sugar-cane growers saw Bufo marinus as a potential saviour. This insect-gobbling toad, newly introduced from Hawaii, promised to make short work of the beetles ravaging the sugar plantations.

At last, the perfect pest...

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