** pop! **

Do you think you can actually see & hear them go BOOM! ?

Ananova:
Germany: Mystery of the exploding toads
Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Visitors to Hamburg parks are being warned to watch out for exploding toads.

Several thousand toads in the city's parks have so far mysteriously spontaneously exploded, sending entrails and toad body parts over a wide area.

Vets and animal welfare workers said the mystery has decimated the city's toad population as well as the unpleasant problem of leaving toad parts scattered around parks and open spaces.

Eyewitnesses say the toads swell up to three and a half times their normal size before suddenly exploding - sending entrails flying metres into the air.

Nature protection worker Werner Smolnik from Hamburg said over the last four days at least a thousand toads had died in this manner in scenes reminiscent of a science fiction film.

He said: "It is a complete mystery, we have a lot of ideas which we are following up, but at the moment we haven't the faintest idea if any of them are correct.

"It could be an unknown virus, or a fungus that has infected the water or a defence mechanism against aggressive crows which have appeared in the area recently.

"You see the toads crawling along the ground, swelling and getting bigger as they go until they are like little tennis balls, and then they suddenly explode."

Vet Otto Horst added: "I have never seen a thing like it."

"It's a real puzzle," agreed Janne Kloepper from the Hamburg Institute for Hygiene and the Environment, adding: "If this keeps up, there will be no toads left in Hamburg."

[ Edited by: Traderpup on 2005-04-27 08:01 ]

AlkaSeltzer is my guess.

Being French I have a soft spot for our amphibian friends. I attended a biology class with a creative fellow who would insert a straw in the froggy's behinds, inflate them, and race them in a sink. These were already dead and pickled for our educational benefit of course.

I believe a strategically placed firecracker can achieve the same results of the German froggies.

Do they have little turbans? Maybe they are Taliban suicide toads.

Perhapes it the work of the Pop Artist, Lance Boyle?

An explanation for the exploding toads.... sounds like a cheesy horror film.....

Source: AFP

TOADS have been exploding by the hundred in Germany because they are being attacked by crows, a veterinary surgeon said.

Animal welfare workers and veterinarians had reported that as many as 1,000 toads had swelled to bursting point and exploded in recent days, propelling their entrails up to a metre into the air.

Now a veterinary surgeon, Frank Mutschmann, who has examined the remains of the toads, said they had been pierced with a single peck by crows trying to eat their livers.

This in turn caused the toads to explode.

"The toads swell up as a form of self-defence. But when their livers are taken away and their stomachs are punctured, their blood vessels explode, their lungs collapse and the other organs come out," Mutschmann said.

"Crows are intelligent animals. They learn very quickly how to eat the toads' livers," he said, adding that between three and five crows could kill around 100 toads.

So many toads have died in a lake in the Altona district of Hamburg that it has been dubbed "the pond of death".

On 2005-04-30 20:58, Traderpup wrote:
So many toads have died in a lake in the Altona district of Hamburg that it has been dubbed "the pond of death".

Oh m'god, that story totally barfed me out man. I do, however think Pond of Death will be a good name for my new Speed Metal band (the name we're using now is Circle of Squirm).