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Frogpocalypse Now
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: Frogpocalypse Now
#32The same thing happened in Australia decades ago. There is a 1988 documentary called "Cane Toads: An Unnatural History" that tells that story. Any information on the extend of the problem today?
That video is a classic, I'm pretty sure most Australians watched it in school, and remember this scene: https://youtu.be/rm3hd1pxHME?t=44
Re: Frogpocalypse Now
#33I lived in Orlando for eight years. I find Florida an ecologically fascinating place. It's the only corner of the continental US that has an honest-to-God jungle climate, which makes it an unusual island in North America that is amenable to non-native species from many parts of South America, Africa, and Asia. On top of that, Florida has a weird cultural history around exoticism. Florida used to be be a little slice…
Someone imported and released Capybaras?
Re: Frogpocalypse Now
#34I lived in Orlando for eight years. I find Florida an ecologically fascinating place. It's the only corner of the continental US that has an honest-to-God jungle climate, which makes it an unusual island in North America that is amenable to non-native species from many parts of South America, Africa, and Asia. On top of that, Florida has a weird cultural history around exoticism. Florida used to be be a little slice…
[deleted]
Re: Frogpocalypse Now
#35I lived in Orlando for eight years. I find Florida an ecologically fascinating place. It's the only corner of the continental US that has an honest-to-God jungle climate, which makes it an unusual island in North America that is amenable to non-native species from many parts of South America, Africa, and Asia. On top of that, Florida has a weird cultural history around exoticism. Florida used to be be a little slice…
Flamingos are back in Florida now too..
Re: Frogpocalypse Now
#36> Florida’s cane toads are believed to descend from escapees from an exotic-animal importer at the Miami airport, where a hundred of them got away in 1955.
I've heard repeatedly that the hazards of inbreeding make it nearly impossible for a species to recover if the population drops too low. There's a theory that the human population bottlenecked down to 20,000 or so individuals 70,000 years ago, and that we nearly went extinct as a result; the scars are still visible today, in the low genetic diversity of modern humans.
So how does a breeding population of a mere 100 frogs remain a going concern dozens of generations later?
Re: Frogpocalypse Now
#37Re: Frogpocalypse Now
#38The same thing happened in Australia decades ago. There is a 1988 documentary called "Cane Toads: An Unnatural History" that tells that story. Any information on the extend of the problem today?
This video, and subsequent works, are discussed in TFA at length.
Re: Frogpocalypse Now
#39My first thought was: are they edible? The venom is in the skin and shoulders. & apparently the answer is yes, if you kill them in the freezer and skin them. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2634736/How-like-CAN... Harvesting for human or animal consumption or fertilizer is about the only thing we can do about the Asian carp invasion of the Mississippi River. There are now some commercial carp fisheries in Ken…
Replace 'edible' with 'usable' ... as the leather apparently is quite tough, and there's been quite some good work on that front.
However, as TFA points out, there's 1.5 billion cane toads in AU, and even if we exported a whole lotta shoes, handbags, etc ... it's not going to make much of a dent in this frustratingly renewable resource.
Aside -- back to 'are they edible' -- there is some interesting adaptive traits being observed[1] with native animals working out how to kill, and selectively consume components of these things, without dying. Unfortunately lots of animals are still dying after eating these things.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptations_of_Australian_anim...
Re: Frogpocalypse Now
#40I lived in Orlando for eight years. I find Florida an ecologically fascinating place. It's the only corner of the continental US that has an honest-to-God jungle climate, which makes it an unusual island in North America that is amenable to non-native species from many parts of South America, Africa, and Asia. On top of that, Florida has a weird cultural history around exoticism. Florida used to be be a little slice…
Someone imported and released Capybaras?
Imported, yes. According to this article, they escaped into the wild:
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/capybaras-may-b...