“The war against Australia’s cane toad has a new tool: cat food.
Using cat food to lure meat ants makes the insects more likely to attack large baby cane toads, according to researchers at the University of Sydney.
Cane toads were introduced to Australia in 1935 to control beetles destroying sugar cane crops. But they’ve since spread and become an invasive menace by eating and poisoning native species.
Unlike many native Australian animals, meat ants can eat toads because they can tolerate the toxic chemicals found within them.
Lead researcher Rick Shine told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “It’s not exactly rocket science. We went out and put out a little bit of cat food right beside the area where the baby toads were coming out of the ponds. The ants rapidly discovered the cat food and thought it tasted great.”
But the cat food was just the appetiser. “When the young toads left the water, they were a perfectly-sized snack for the hungry ants,”"
Read more at New Scientist (Thanks Eliza)
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There was a young lady who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she swallowed a fly.
Just as long as the ant themselves arent introduced
this sounds like a headline from “the onion”!
Let’s just hope that cat food doesn’t attract a cat as well as the swarm of meat-eating ants…
“No, Felix, no!!!”
And the toads will stay and sit there while being eaten by a couple of those ants? Or don’t they get the ants yet? Or do they sting em first all together and then start feasting theirselves on the paralized toad?
Not my type of thing I’d like to see I have to say. I’d been saving the toads all the time I would have seen it happening.
Not sure that i like this post, i feel sorry for the toads.
Those poor toads. I just hope they will not be attacked again and I am hoping too that this idea will be successful.