hey guys gals and non-binary pals today we're going to talk about the most infamous species of
amphibian in the world and that is the cane toad or the marine toad or neotropical toad everything
has different names but we all know about the cane toad right so that's what the species spotlight is
on today this is our cane toad or marine toad as i like to call them so these guys are as i
just stated the world's most famous amphibian and they're one of the largest species of toad
i think they're like the third or fourth largest species of toad frog in the world um like the
goliath bull frogs from africa are a little bit bigger but these guys can get pretty big
um so we'll start just talking off a little bit about these guys so as i said they get pretty
big so they usually you know are around five to six inches i'm going to try not to move too too
much because he does not like being handled and there's good reasons as to why i don't handle
him and i'll get to that in a second but so you know four or five six inches but they can get even
larger so females are usually a little bit longer and that's to accommodate for like the large egg
large sizes of eggs and things like that but they can reach upwards of nine and a half to ten inches
long so huge little frogs this guy's probably about five and a half inch from uh head to
butt um i know i'm sorry little one i know he really does not like uh being out and he really
hates the bright lights so i'm gonna do this as uh le as easy and less stressed as possible
originally they're from central and south america so their range is actually all the way up into
like the southern little bit of texas where they do occur naturally in texas all the way
down through central america all the way down into kind of northern central south america
that's where they're originally from and they are normally found in kind of like open grasslands
and woodlands that you know in a lot of those areas there are seasonal changes of weather
like high rainy seasons and things like that but they have found um as the years go on because
we've known about these guys for a long time they actually prefer man-made environments so
drainage ditches cauldrons alleys places like that um because that's where a lot of pests preside and
so where bugs and small rodents and critters like that appear so does the cane toad um and earlier
when i said that we've known about them for a long time i mean a long time there have been fossils
found from the early to mid mayo scene so like think saber tooth tiger right entirely the same
indistinguishable can't tell the difference between that fossil toad and this guy so they've
been around for a while and we've known about their environmental uh pest control things for a
very long time too and that's exactly why they've become so famous as you know essentially the the
world's best and mo and most well-known introduced species that has become invasive around the world
these guys have accidentally accidentally become invasive in a couple places but most of the places
outside of their historic range they're there because we put them there so obviously they're
most famous in australia and i'll talk about the australia problem in just a little while
but these guys have been introduced to different places from the 1800s into the 1950s starting with
and just to name a few the philippines jamaica french guyana hawaii florida islands of japan
a lot barbados so many different places and there's a lot more the list is like 40 foot the
40 places long it's insane that we deliberately try to put them in that we actually once tried
to introduce them into louisiana unsuccessfully i don't know how that happened but unsuccessfully
in louisiana but they that's where this guy is actually from is florida this is a field collected
invasive from florida that someone purchased from a reptile distributed in florida and then
was given to me by him so that's where this guy's from so hooray out of south florida so
as i said before in australia these guys are most famous because of australia where they have
taken over so much of that entire continent and the main reason why is because they grow
fast they breed fast young and big and they don't have a whole lot of natural predators
so with all true toads so the bufo all these guys aren't actually bufo
they have these large glands right at the back of their head on the top of their heads
that are enlarged that contain diff they contain a subscription of a poisonous toxin or bufo toxins
and in high concentrations you know from a medium to large sized cane toad that can be toxic
for a lot of animals including people like if i sat there and put him in my mouth and
started chomp down i that may not end well for either of us and so because of that
animals have started to avoid them entirely so they don't have and that includes a lot of
different venomous reptiles dingoes tasmanian tiger tigers because they're in tasmania too
qualls a lot of animals won't touch them because they are so highly toxic that being said there
is one species of snake that is capable of eating them in australia it's a type of keel back
it's actually in the same genus as the only poisonous snake the tiger
killed back in indonesia but that's neither here nor there so they're a big problem because well
kind of people like like everything else you know it's always they're there they're
not there because they wanted to be there they're there because we put him there but
that being said these guys are actually a really interesting species outside of the
whole you know destroying the ecosystem and all of that really bad jazz that being said
they are really good bug eaters because they're a toad and if any of you out there keep frogs
or toads you know that they are great eaters and they will eat anything that they think they can
get their hands or mouth onto sometimes they can get a little overzealous with those things
that's why they were introduced everywhere because they are great natural pesticides
but in their natural range down in south america a lot of indigenous tribes
of south america and central america would use those bufo toxins in a similar way as
the poison dart frogs or they'd use it as an arrowhead poison which is really cool
since then we've started to use them for a lot of other things so for a lot of kind of you know the
asian old kind of that kind of medicine i don't i don't want to sound too derogatory or too negative
in any way like that but essentially in a lot of asian cultures they've been using them for
an aphrodisiac they've used it as a hair replacer or a hair tonic they've used it as a stimulant for
well both for the aphrodisiac part as well as hair stimulations for just overall health they've used
it in uh cardiovascular surgery to lower people to lower patients heart rates while working on that
they've also been widely adapted and used for laboratory work because
they don't take up a whole lot of room they can be studied for the bufo toxins which can
be used a lot of things like we said talked about like with lowering blood pressure on
heart rates and things like that um they do make interesting pets and i know that sounds really
bad to say as i just spent the last five minutes telling you how toxic they are and
why they're taking over everywhere but if you're wearing gloves if you're handling them if you're
carefully and if you're washing your hands regularly although i still would not recommend
really any sort of regular handling of any amphibian even even toads which you know
can adapt a little bit drier climates which is why they're warranty why they're dryer
i still wouldn't do it and they do clean themselves so you can actually get the bufo toxins
on the rest of their actual skin too because they'll sit there and rub their legs across those
glands too so it can be kind of all over them um but they actually make kind of interesting
pets they will recognize people they will come up to the front of their enclosures to ask for food
you can kind of feed them whatever they're trash cans so they can be fed a wide variety of foods
any real insect you can give them to you can give them fish you can give them well i don't
really recommend it you could give them smaller amphibians rodents things like that would not
with any sort of regularity mind you but they can kind of take whatever and they get a decent size
you can see them you know i'll give him a little bit more room obviously this is not what he lives
in he's in a much he's actually in an enclosure that's a little bit longer than this whole table
and about as wide but this is just for the show off because i'm not gonna mess with him too too
much but that being said cane toads they are a really interesting animal and yeah there's a whole
lot of negativity associated with them and rightly so they are very bad invasive but once again
it's not their fault they're invasive it's kinda entirely our fault why they're there and
why they're invasive in the first place but with that in mind if you do decide to keep one as a pet
just make sure you wash your hands well give them plenty of space give them lots of food clean water
all that jazz and they can be a really cool and interesting oddball pet that may not maybe not a
whole lot of people have but it's still pretty cool hope you enjoyed this video if you have
any questions about marine toads or anything else please let me know down in the comments
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