Australia Imported 101 Toads to Eat a Beetle. Now There Are 200 Million

In 1935, Australia imported 102 cane toads to eat a beetle that was destroying its sugar crop. One died on the way. The other 101 did not eat the beetle. Today there are more than 200 million of them, they have evolved longer legs to invade faster, and they are slowly eating their way across a continent. This is the story of the cane toad: how a confident idea from a sugar conference became one of the most famous biological control disasters in history, the scientist who warned everyone, and what Australia is trying now. CHAPTERS 0:00 Toadzilla 1:10 File 01: The Beetle Problem 2:18 File 02: The Shipment 4:15 So did it work? 4:38 File 03: The Buffet 7:20 File 04: Collateral Damage 8:22 File 05: Countermeasures 10:12 File 06: The Mascot If you enjoyed this case file, a like and a subscribe keep the archive open. SOURCES (selected) Phillips, B. L., Brown, G. P., Webb, J. K. & Shine, R. (2006). Invasion and the evolution of speed in toads. Nature 439, 803. Brown, G. P., Shelton, C., Phillips, B. L. & Shine, R. (2007). Invasion, stress, and spinal arthritis in cane toads. PNAS 104, 17698–17700. CREDITS Narration: AI-generated voice (ElevenLabs). Music "Scheming Weasel" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Additional music and sound effects from Pixabay (Pixabay Content License): AtlasAudio, PHANTASTICBEATS, futuristic_poetry, XtremeFreddy, VitMatNotes, DELOSound, PaulYudin, Music_for_Creators. Stock video: Pexels (Pexels License) — Prerna, Jyoti, Kindel Media, Paulo, DasunR, John, mdkamal, Olivier, ahmetyuksek, jibarofoto, Pressmaster, Darlene Alderson, Adrian, Pixabay. Photos via Wikimedia Commons. Images were cropped, cut out, recoloured and/or combined with graphics. CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0): Sam Fraser-Smith; Brian Gratwicke; Alex Popovkin; Greg Schechter; Maximilian Paradiz; Bettina Arrigoni; Donald Hobern; ciamabue (Flickr); S J Bennett; John Tann. CC BY 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0): Sam Fraser-Smith; CSIRO (greyback cane beetle larva); Wildlife Explorer (northern quoll). CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0): Kerry Raymond (Mulgrave Sugar Mill, Gordonvale). Public domain / CC0 / no known restrictions: Alan Schmierer; MKFI; Martin Thoma; State Library of New South Wales (Joseph Lyons portrait); State Library of Queensland; Internet Archive Book Images (Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations bulletins); John Gould (northern quoll illustration); Unknown authors (rabbit myxomatosis trial, 1938; Mulgrave Mill locomotive); Charles O'Rear / U.S. National Archives (Hilo shoreline). Map outline: Natural Earth (public domain). All illustrations, cards and animations: Animal Unknown.