I Have Known For Some Time,

cane toads have slowly but surely taken over Australia’s northern landscape, 

photograph QLD Environmental Protection Agency, and they are now moving westward at an estimated 40 to 60 km per year, the cane toad, (Bufo marinus or Rhinella marina), was introduced into Australia to control destructive beetles in Queensland’s sugarcane crops, but they have now become a ecological disaster, the cane toad defends itself through poison and is poisonous, while some birds and native predators have learned to avoid the poison glands of adult toads, other predators are more vulnerable and die rapidly after ingesting toads, the article is here, and now we get to the part I did not know, I had always thought that crocodiles were pretty much indestructible, but the population of them in northern Australia has been decimated by them eating cane toads, some populations of freshwater crocodiles in tropical Australia have fallen by more than 70% due to ingesting cane toads,

photograph Georgia Ward-Fear, a crocodile takes the bait, a cunning plan was needed, scientists collected cane toads, removed the poisonous parts, and injected the bodies with a nausea-inducing chemical that caused the crocs eating them to feel temporarily sick, the method used is called ‘conditioned taste aversion’, it is a behavioural ecology method and it worked remarkably well, “The first three days we noticed the crocodiles were taking the cane toads, then they would go away,” says Bunuba ranger coordinator Paul Bin Busu, whose team set up hundreds of bait stations across 4 large gorge systems in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia, “Our baiting completely prevented deaths in areas where cane toads were arriving and decreased deaths by 95% in areas where toads had been for a couple of years,” says Macquarie’s Dr Georgia Ward-Fear, who is lead author of the report detailing the findings in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. I never thought that crocodiles could be poisoned by cane toads, and even less taught not to eat them! The full article is here.