Post by Warrigal on Dec 31, 2018 8:32:44 GMT -5
Australia has a cane toad problem. They are an introduced species that have gotten out of control. They are poisonous and our native species have no defences against them. However, some species seem to have learned not to eat them.
Monty the olive python seems to be one of these.
Cane toads hitch ride on Monty the Python's back amid Kununurra storm
A farmer in far north Western Australia has captured the bizarre sight of a knot of cane toads hitching a ride on a snake in the middle of the night.
Paul Mock was checking the dam on his farm outside Kununurra near the Northern Territory border when he came across the hitchhiking amphibians. An overnight deluge meant he had to get up around 1:30am to drop the dam's spillway, when he saw water had risen so far it had forced thousands of cane toads to seek higher ground.
"I noticed because the water was so high, that it had flooded all the burrows of the cane toads which live around the edge of the lake underneath the lawn. So they were all on top of the lawn, thousands of them," he said.
He then went to investigate the other side of the dam in case the deluge had washed out the road, when he discovered the slithering toad transporter.
"When I was halfway across the lawn, I bumped into the snake and he was just crawling along with all these toads hanging on, which I thought was extremely unusual and had never seen anything like that before.
For further information and some brief video see here: www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-31/cane-toads-hitch-ride-on-monty-the-python-back/10675944
