It's bush's fault
Posted on 04/28/2005 12:34:11 AM PDT by Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit
BERLIN — More than 1,000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a Hamburg pond in recent weeks, and German scientists still have no explanation for what's causing the combustion, an official said Wednesday.
Both the pond's water and body parts of the toads have been tested, but scientists have been unable to find a bacteria or virus that would cause the toads to swell up and pop, said Janne Kloepper, of the Hamburg-based Institute for Hygiene and the Environment.
"It's absolutely strange," she said. "We have a really unique story here in Hamburg. This phenomenon really doesn't seem to have appeared anywhere before."
The toads at a pond in the upscale neighborhood of Altona have been blowing up since the beginning of the month, filling up like balloons until their stomachs suddenly burst.
"It looks like a scene from a science-fiction movie," Werner Schmolnik, the head of a local environment group, told the Hamburger Abendblatt daily. "The bloated animals suffer for several minutes before they finally die."
Biologists have come up with several theories, but Kloepper said that most have been ruled out.
The pond's water quality is no better or worse than other bodies of water in Hamburg, the toads did not appear to have a disease, and a laboratory in Berlin has ruled out the possibility that it is a fungus that made its way from South America, she said.
She said that tests will continue. In the meantime, city residents have been warned to stay away from the pond.
Toads should eat bugs not beans.
No, I take that back, it's Bush's fault.
Aww nawww!
My toaded, she 'sploded!
What!? Islamic fundamentalist toads now?
Looking at the obesity figures in the United States, some might claim it already has.
Coffee everywhere...Darn, this was a new monitor, too...LOL!
Omlagus Garfungiloops
Could a prankster, as an elaborate joke, be gluing bits of Alka-Seltzer or Brioschi to grasshoppers or moths and setting them free in the area? Toad eat, toad bloat, toad die.
The unusual part is that lesser amounts of the chemical (Atrozine) per billion liters of water causes more damage than higher amounts. It is thought that the amphibians' immune systems detect the higher levels but effectively ignore the miniscule levels that cause the worst damage.
This program asked the disturbing question "If we've introduced 70,000 inorganic compounds to our ecosystem in the relatively short period of 60 years, and have no possible means to track how all of those compounds can interact with each other in the natural cycle, how can we know what effects this will have on plants, animals and we humans who also ingest the water these molecular compounds find their way into."
God only knows what IG Farben has unknowingly unleashed on Germany over the years.
Whatcha mean by "now?"
;o)
I wonder if we could get Registered to make up THAT life-cycle chart?
It's bush's fault
Among other things you are talking about endocryn disrupters.
There is some nasty stuff out there and some Freepers will tell you that nothing man can do can harm the planet. These Freepers are pretty stupid and very blind.
Frogs are important to pay attention to because they are canaries in a mine shaft for all creatures.
They live in water and on land and have an anatomy not so far off from humans (which is why we disect them in high school).
Nature is an infinite sink and will eventually repair itself over time. But even an infinite sink can get full, because the drain off is not infinitely large.
See my tag line.
Oh no! Those frogs have been eating pop rocks and coca-cola!
Maybe its a gang of 9 year old boys stuffing lit firecrackers in them.
ping
I was going to suggest they look for a boy with a bicycle pump.
But I guess people have seen them puff up and die without outside interference. This is really strange.
Hehehehe...
My thoughts exactly.
? I only know if this from reading about it in books, btw.
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