Thousands of the toxic animals captured and killed in Australia

Toads turned to fertiliser

Thousands of the toxic animals captured and killed in Australia

Thousands of toxic cane toads have been captured in Australia's northeast so they can be converted into fertiliser for farmers, an organiser of the second annual round-up said yesterday.

Toad Day Out's Lisa Ahrens said she was hopeful that 10,000 of the animals -- the equivalent of one ton of toads -- had been captured and killed. "I'm hoping we did," she said.

The cane toad, which carries a poisonous sac of venom on the back of its head toxic enough to kill snakes and crocodiles, is regarded as a pest in Australia because it wreaks havoc on the environment.

Ahrens said Australians had little love for the warty amphibian, which is known to kill domesticated pets and had no problems collecting the animals so they could be killed humanely.

"They just take over anything. They are quite industrious," she said of the toads. "They are an introduced species and they need to be out."

Residents were asked Saturday evening to collect the toads, which come out at night, and then place the plastic bags in their refrigerators. They were then, still alive, assessed as cane toads by organisers.

The toads were then killed humanely in freezers with their bodies to be used in the most part to create fertilizer for the cane farmers which have battled them for decades.

Australia is beset by millions of cane toads after they were introduced to control scarab beetles in the 1930s.
Prolific maters, the toads eat anything and are incredibly tough, with all attempts to fight their spread, including driving cars over them and smashing them with cricket bats, having failed.

The biggest toad hauled was a 18.4-cm long monster which weighed half a kilo.

"It's as big as a kitten," she said.

Did you know?
A group of toads is called a knot

525 grams
The weight of the largest of 1,410 toads collected in Cairns