Transgenic (And Hungry) "Peter Pan" Toads Could Take A Bite Out Of Australia's Century-Old Plague Of Invasive Cane Toads

[hatrack]

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The cane toad was introduced in 1935 in an effort to stop native beetles devastating sugar cane crops. An utter failure as a biological control, it was spectacularly successful as an invasive species. The toads now number more than 200 million, having conquered the entire east coast of Queensland, swept across the tropical north, and are now marching down Australia’s west coast. Along the way they have devastated big predators naive to their deadly toxins, from lizards more than 1 metre long to freshwater crocodiles, marsupial carnivores to king brown snakes.

“The history of biocontrol is littered with failures,” Shine says. “But the introduction of cane toads to Australia is one of the classic examples of a truly stupid decision.” Shine has spent time in the toad’s native South American range. There, kept in check by parasites and co-evolved predators, and in competition with similar species, the cane toad can be “hard to find”.

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According to the team’s field studies, 99% of cane toad eggs are eaten in ponds that already have tadpoles – meaning eggs have next to no chance of survival until those tadpoles metamorphose and leave. But would the Peter Pans share that taste for toad egg? Shine and his wife, Terri, address this question on a website they run to document the work. “To our delight they are super cannibals – they eat about four times as many eggs as a normal tadpole,” they say on the site.

Shine says that unable to transform into toads, his Peter Pans grow larger and exist as tadpoles for as long as three months, as opposed to – under ideal conditions – fewer than three weeks. Which means that if Peter Pans were put into a pond, they might eat just about every single egg laid in it for an entire breeding season. Then, unable to metamorphose, they too would die. Much work remains before any “widescale deployment in the field” of gene-edited tadpoles. The team must master mass producing Peter Pans, assess their impacts, publish results and earn a social licence.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/26/scientists-have-birthed-a-super-cannibal-that-never-grows-up-could-it-be-key-to-combating-australias-cane-toad-menace

[Norrrm]

1. Sometimes a magic fix becomes its own new problem.

The automobile was the solution to pollution for horse poop in the streets.