Cane Toads: A Brief Introduction

I like frogs a lot they're one of my special interests. So here we go.

Cane toads (a.k.a* Rhinella marina*) are a spectacular amphibian native to South and (mainland) Central America. Cane toads are terrestrial creatures meaning, like many true toads, they live the entirety of their life on land. Alongside that they are a particularly tenacious species with an undeniable drive to thrive. See unlike may other species of amphibian cane toads will eat living or dead matter. This doesn't sound huge until we look at how toads typically hunt. Toads traditionally will find a place to settle wait for movement then strike. Cane toads don't even require movement. They'll try to eat anything in their surroundings that seems like food, something we will touch on later. Nonetheless, they are truly the recycling bins of the toad world.

This willingness to eat anything combined with traditional spawning methods leads to tons of little cane toads growing up to be massive toxic cane toads.
The cane toad has two primary defense mechanisms: its size, and it's poison. Cane toads grow to a massive 15-22cm (6-9 inches). This means some of the predators a toad may typically worry about are simply too small to handle it. Alongside this, cane toads can inflate their lungs causing them to puff up and appear much larger to predators than they actually are. But when it does get attacked that's not all. The cane toad houses bufotoxin, a type of toxin found in many types of toads, plants, and mushrooms. This toxin is expressed though the parotoid gland, right behind its ear, in the shape of a triangle, circled here: 

Bufotoxin is a dangerous poison for both people and pets to the point both have passed, become seriously injured, or hospitalized due to the poison. (Note: toad licking in general, but especially in this case is both gross and dangerous.) As a result only a select few species evolved to handle the poison can safely consume cane toads.
But if they were just a cool toad I probably wouldn't be talking about them. No in fact. Cane toads are highly invasive in the Australia, the U.S., the Caribbean, and many other islands. They have no natural predators and so their population spread like wildfire destroying habitats and driving other species to the brink of extinction as it swept across the landscape. Though there have been efforts to eradicate invasive cane toads they always seem to come back. How did they even get to some of these places though?

Humans of course. In the 1930's both the U.S. and Australia both wanted to start growing sugar cane, but it came with one huge challenge. Sugar cane came with cane beetles which in turn devoured the crop. So what better to do then bring in their natural predator, the cane toad. And so cane toads were brought to both nations and started wrecking absolute havoc on the ecosystem. It didn't take too long for them to become dangerous invasive to local ecosystems. What really made people upset though was the risk they posed to children and pets. Insult was added to injury when in 1955 a man accidentally released 100 live cane toads in a Floridian (of course) airport, bolstering their numbers.
Now cane toad populations are out of control and showing no signs of stopping. Even with faced with overpopulation and near extinction of their food sources they simply began eating each other. What can we do about this though? Well a lot of the same things we can do about invasives.
There are main things to do to keep invasives at bay

• Keep up to date with local guidelines on killing, capturing or reporting invasives
• Acting without knowing current guidelines could make the problem worse
• Making sure we aren’t providing shelter
• In the case of cane toads clear any rubbish or anything that may provide shade from your yard
• Get rid of standing water
• These can invite pests of all sorts as well as a multitude of invasives
• Deny Access
• For toads you can make barriers about 20 inches high around your yard so they can’t jump in
• Can be as simple as taking care of bushes and trees
• Don’t leave things like dog or cat food outside
• All of these things combined with local campaigns to get rid of their populations in areas they're invasive can help lower their numbers and slowly bring ecosystems closer to their natural balance.