Wednesday, April 08, 2009

...Big toad

In contrast to yesterday's tiny frog - a big toad. This is of course Bufo marinus, the Cane Toad. Its native to central and south america but this photo was taken in St. Kitts one of many places where this voracious little monster has been released. I'm sure many of you are aware of its devastating spread through Australia and Hawaii. It doesn't seem to do so much damage here.


big toad

It certainly wasn't worried by me though and soon puffed itself up to tell me to do one. I naturally found this hilarious but respected its wishes nonetheless after a shot of the inflated toad.

big toad2

I can't look at these guys without thinking of Carl Hiasen's character skink who appears at one point high as a kite on smoked cane toad...but seriously kids say no to toad - bufotoxins aren't cool.

4 comments:

CanadianGardenJoy said...

That is one seriously HUGE toad ! LOL

Signe said...

This is realy a big one. Is he living in your garden?

tai haku said...

GardenJoy4Me - yep he's a monster.

Signe - no he's not. they haven't been introduced to this island (yet) and we don't have enough freshwater for them anyway I'd guess - he was hanging around a hotel on another island.

jason said...

Wow! That's a big toad. Mind you, everything I've seen on cane toads says they get rather large, hence their propensity to do serious damage when their numbers grow large enough. I'm glad they haven't been as catastrophic an introduction in St. Kitts as they have been elsewhere.