Something like a Gennie in a bottle, this is instead is a can of cat food.
Scientists from the University of Sydney said that putting cat food close to ponds inhabited by baby cane toads attracts carnivorous ants that are also immune to the toads' poisonous skin.
"In one spot we tested, 98 percent of the baby toads were attacked within the first two minutes," researcher Rick Shine told Reuters. "It was a bit like a massacre."
Scientist have spent many years and a lot of money trying to find ways to get rid of these toxic toads that has plagued Australia's flora and fauna for decades and which is considered one of the country's worse environmental mistakes.
The toads were introduced from Hawaii back in 1935 in an effort to control native cane beetles.
Shine said the study was aimed at boosting the numbers of ants around the breeding areas of cane toads, and not upsetting the ecological balance by introducing the insects to an area that they wouldn't normally be in.
"All we're doing is encouraging the ants to flourish somewhere where they already flourish, letting them know there's particularly good food around so we get more of them down there on a very short-term basis," he said.
"Baby toads are incredibly stupid and their reaction to being attacked is to freeze. I think they're trying to advertise the fact they're poisonous and let the predator get a taste of that, but it doesn't work for the ant because it isn't affected."
While Shine realizes the study's findings will never eradicate cane toads from Australia he said cat food was a relatively simple way to try and limit their numbers.
"I'm optimistic that we'll find ways to reduce toads numbers, I think I'd have to be a very optimistic person indeed to think we'll ever get rid of cane toads from Australia," he added.
These toads may be ugly, poisonous, and kill native animals every year, but it still ends up on dinner plates in Asia.
The Cane toad's poison is highly prized in Chinese medicine and the meat is also eaten in some parts of the country and the demand for cane toads is quite substantial. The Chinese have used toad poison, the skin, organs and gut for their traditional medicines such as, as an expectorant, heart stimulant and as a diuretic.
It has also been used as a remedy for toothache and
sinus problems.
Toad toxin is considered a class one drug - like heroin,
and needs a special permit to send it overseas.
Here's the video: WATCH
