Skip to main content

A grey-colouered tadpole close up with little round black eggs in its mouth, hovering over sandy-coloured small rocks.



An adult cane-toad close-up, it's throat is moving up and down as it breathes.

A circle with icons of two ribbon-like egg clutches, tadpole outline, a small toad outline and two toads reproducing.

"We seem to have ended up with these sort of quite large, relatively long-lived voracious cannibals that are just ideally suited to control the numbers of their own species."

A map of Australia showing how toads have taken over most of eastern Queensland, a little of NSW, and the top of QLD, NT and WA.

A snowy looking cane toad with red eyes perched on a black bench. There's a slight yellowing along its topside and glands.

A cane toad on a rock lit by a flash, in the background a pink sky and a boab tree silhouette.

An old article from 1937 showing an article called "Handsome is as handsome does Mr Toad comes to Australia".

"We're just producing something that's exactly the same as a normal mutation,"
Professor Shine said.

Get all the latest science stories from across the ABC.
Your information is being handled in accordance with the ABC Privacy Collection Statement.
Posted , updated