Australia: A “giant cane toad” with an equal weight of newborn human babies has been found by Australian rangers in North Queensland. The “monster” specimen is six times bigger than the average toad and could break a world record.
The Queensland Department of Environment and Science announced that a gigantic cane toad, which was named “Toadzilla,” was discovered by rangers in Queensland’s Conway National Park and weighed in at 2.7kg (almost 6lbs), which could possibly be a new world record,
“I reached down and grabbed the cane toad and couldn’t believe how big and heavy it was. We dubbed it Toadzilla and quickly put it into a container so we could remove it from the wild,” Ranger Kylee Gray, who found the toad, shared in a statement.
“A cane toad that size will eat anything it can fit into its mouth, and that includes insects, reptiles, and small mammals,” Ms. Gray remarked, adding that Toadzilla was believed to be a female.
Ms. Gray is not sure about the age of Toadzilla, a species that can live up to 15 years in the wild, but believes she has “been around a long time.”
Toadzilla has since been euthanized, as is standard practice in Australia for pests, and will be donated to the Queensland Museum.
Cane toads are a non-native species introduced to Australia in 1935 from South and Central America to control pest beetles in Queensland’s sugarcane industry before the use of agricultural chemicals.
According to the Australian government, they are capable of poisoning predators that try to eat them, and “there is no broadscale way to control” cane toads, which are now found throughout northern Australia as well as moving westward at an estimated range of 40 to 60 km (approximately 25 to 37 miles) per year.
