Exploding Toads Baffle German Experts

Offbeat-AFP
Sat Apr 23,12:16 PM ET

BERLIN (AFP) - Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister
end in Germany in recent days, it was reported: they exploded.

According to reports from animal welfare workers and veterinarians
as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their
bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled for
up to a metre (three feet).

It is like "a science fiction film", according to Werner Smolnik of a
nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where
the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed.

"You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then
exploding."

He said the bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times
their normal size.

"I have never seen such a thing," said veterinarian Otto Horst. So
bad has the death toll been that the lake in the Altona district of
Hamburg has been dubbed "the pond of death."

Access to it has been sealed off and every night a biologist visits
it between 2:00 and 3:00 am, which appears to be peak time for
batrachians to go bang.

Explanations include an unknown virus, a fungus that has infected
the water, or crows, which in an echo of the Alfred Hitchcock movie
"The Birds", attack the toads, literally scaring them to death.

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