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Revealing Germany's Toad Killers

DW staff (jam)April 29, 2005

The horrific scenes playing out in Hamburg and Denmark of toads swelling and exploding, sending their entrails flying, may be the fault of hungry crows, who peck the amphibians to get at their livers.

https://p.dw.com/p/6a9S
The likely culpritsImage: AP

The real-life horror movie taking place at one of Hamburg's picturesque ponds has had residents scratching their heads and holding their stomachs. Toads, at least one thousand of them, have met dreadful ends in one of the city's upscale neighborhoods, leaving this mortal coil in a writhing frenzy after they jettison their guts some three feet (one meter) from their bodies.

But now a Berlin veterinarian who has joined the team of biologists and environmental workers investigating the frightful phenomenon thinks he has the secret behind the nightmare. Crows, he said, are to blame, who evidently have a taste for toad liver.

"The crows are clever," said Frank Mutschmann, the vet who tested specimens at the Hamburg pond. He theorized that a bird pecks into the toad with its beak between the amphibian's chest and abdominal cavity to get at the liver, and the toad puffs itself up as a natural defense mechanism.

Mysteriöse Krötenexplosionen in Hamburg
Toast toad: post-explosionImage: AP

But the defense mechanism backfires, Mutschmann said, since there's a hole in the toad's body and the liver is missing. The blood vessels and lungs burst and the other organs ooze out.

He said despite the gruesome nature of the affair, it actually isn't that unusual, although dramatic. The fact that it is in an urban area has drawn all the attention.

Horror movie

But shocked environmental workers has described the scene as something out of a science-fiction movie, since they've witnessed the bloated frogs twisting in agony for several minutes, then inflating like a balloon before they literally burst, scatting their insides all around them.

"It's horrible," biologist Heidi Mayerhöfer told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper. "The entrails slide out, but the animal isn't dead yet. They keep struggling for several minutes."

Die Alster in Hamburg
Will Hamburg be famous for bursting toads?Image: AP

The jury's still out over whether Mutschmann's theory is correct, since it's only one of several competing hypotheses, including a virus or even toad suicide.

Whatever the cause, it's cast a dark shadow over the toads' Hamburg pond home, which has now been rechristened "the death pool."