Exploding Toads in Germany (1 Viewer)

[Hanno]

Mystery of German exploding toads

The toads of Altona are dying in their thousands
Toads in an area of northern Germany are being killed off by a mysterious disease - they are exploding.
Thousands of the amphibians have died in recent days in a pond in Hamburg's Altona district, with their bodies swelling to bursting point.

The toads' entrails are propelled for up to a metre (3.2ft), in scenes that have been likened to science fiction.

Scientists are baffled. Possible explanations include a unknown virus or a fungus in the pond.

"You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding," German conservationist Werner Smolnik told AFP news agency.

The bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size, he said.

"I have never seen such a thing," AFP quotes veterinarian Otto Horst as saying. The site - which has been dubbed "the pond of death" - has been closed to the public.

 

[David Nicholson]

Sounds nasty. Ive seen dead frogs turned blue by polluted water, but that ....

 

[redshift]

The top picture in this news story
( http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1563663,00.html )
makes me wonder if someone has been drinking too much schnapps!

Or maybe an April Fool that has just gone on spreading ?

A local perspective:

"I'm actually sitting here at work in Hamburg, and just read the link. I think the new pope is still hording all the headlines, local news hasn't covered this. I just asked my colleague, who lives in Altona, if he'd anything about his neighboring toads exploding. First, he thought he just didn't understand my German. Then his response (roughly translated) was "WHAT is doing WHAT and WHERE??!!!!"

 

[njlarsen]

CNN carries the same story:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/27/exploading.toads.ap/index.html

Niels

 

[redshift]

Toad mystery solved: birds to blame!

From TheRegister website:

Mystery solved. We're obliged to those readers who sent us the breathless news that today's Der Spiegel says crows have been fingered as the culprits. Apparently the crow pecks a small hole in the toad to get at the liver. The toad begins to inflate itself - its normal defence mechanism - but because there is no separation between lung cavity and abdomen, the poor blighter keeps on expanding until it goes pop. That's the gist of it, at least. We're going to conclude by noting that if you tried to make this up, your friends would probably advise you to seek professional help.