As Alex told us last year, carnivorous ants were deployed to help thin out the environmental mistake that is the cane toad in Australia. They brought the toads over from Hawaii in 1935 in an ill-advised effort to wipe out another pesky species, sugar cane-destroying beetles.
The toxicity of these amphibians has since wreaked havoc on indigenous wildlife, and now there's an answer as to how to get the meat-eating ants on their case: cat food.
Link to Reuters Link to Guardian (Photo credit: B.N. Sullivan)
The toxicity of these amphibians has since wreaked havoc on indigenous wildlife, and now there's an answer as to how to get the meat-eating ants on their case: cat food.
Putting cat food close to ponds inhabited by baby cane toads attracts carnivorous ants that are also immune to the toads' poisonous skin. The ants then attack the baby toads and eat them.
"In one spot we tested, 98 percent of the baby toads were attacked within the first two minutes," researcher Rick Shine told Reuters. "It was a bit like a massacre." Shine said the study was aimed at boosting the numbers of ants around the breeding areas of cane toads, and not upsetting the ecological balance by introducing the insects to an area that they wouldn't normally be in.
Link to Reuters Link to Guardian (Photo credit: B.N. Sullivan)
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That genious thinking is what put those toads there in the first place.
Bob Barker. Have your ants spayed or neutered
Also, Gauldar, you did get that Paulo was being sarcastic, yes?
It seems I made a spelling mistake, that was supposed to be "genus" thinking. I posted that last message in a hurry.