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'Monster' Cane Toad Captured in Australia
By now, many people have seen this photo of the large toad that is being called "Toadzilla".
Toadzilla: 2 pound Cane Toad captured in Australia.
There are two things that interest me about this oversized toad. One is that I heard a story about him on the radio that told just enough of the facts to grab people's attention, but not the complete story. The other thing that interests me is the cane toad is another example of man's trying to improve on nature and failing miserably.
First of all, I was listening to a morning radio station when the DJs brought up this story. Now, either their information was brief and not well researched or they just went for the sensational parts and left out the rest. For instance, they mentioned that "Toadzilla" is as large as a dog. Well...last time I checked dogs come in all shapes and sizes. For an uninformed listener, they may be thinking this toad is as big as say...a German Shepherd! However, he really is only about as large as a very small dog. All the DJ had to say was that he weighed in at a whopping 2 pounds, but of course it is much more sensational to use the dog reference.
The DJ went on to say that the toad was rare. Again, he didn't do his homework. This toad was imported into Australia in the 1930s in an attempt to control scarab beetles. Instead, it devastated wildlife in Australia ranging from snakes to lizards to crocodiles (which all die when they eat the poisonous cane toad). There is a group trying to eradicated the toads from Australia (where they didn't originally belong) and they are having a hard time getting rid of all of them. So it was made to sound like the species was rare, when in fact it is not.
So that was my first complaint and it made me wonder how many other news stories we hear are partial truths designed to sensationalize the facts instead of tell us the truth of the matter.
On to the second and even more important issue...this is another example of man meddling and the consequences being less than optimal. And maybe we should take a long look at that before we start making other changes to our environment. Some things to look at:
Kudzu (it was supposed to stop soil erosion and ended up being a virtually indestructible weed that took over all plant life alongside our highways.)
Killing of predators (kill off the wolves and then people are keep the deer population in check so that deer don't destroy agricultural interests and/or starve to death). This is just one example of this imbalance.
Introduction of Cane Toad : Here a predator was introduced, but the long term consequences were devastating. There are many other examples of this type of thing occuring too, even though the introduction is often through ignorance (pythons being let loose in the Everglades for example).
Now, we are a conscientious people on this planet. We feel like we cause imbalances or we see imbalances around us and we are driven to fix it. But we never seem to stop and think it through. We want the problem fixed immediately and we jump to it. I would like to see us learn from past mistakes and start to think thing through a bit. We shouldn't jump at the first solution that presents itself as usually the easiest or most obvious is not the best.
