By: Smriti Rao
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/04/14/could-a-rain-of-dead-poisoned-toads-save-an-australian-marsupial/
75 years ago, Australia put a new poisonous, cane toad into their sugar cane fields so that they could battle the beetle infestations. The toads helped, but after awhile they started spreading all over. Australia's native animals starting eating the toads and dieing. Such animals include crocodiles, snakes, lizards- and the quoll. The quolls, a cat-like marsupial, would die after eating just one of those cane toads. The other animals did not just die after one toad but they still got sick. They were able to realize that it didn't make them feel good and learn to stay away from the toads. But the quoll's couldn't realize anything since they would die and not know what happened. Now, the quoll is endangered but scientists may have found a remarkable new way to save them. The scientists are training the quolls to avoid the toads by using a method known as conditioned taste aversion. While the scientists trained them, they would feed the quolls one, small dead toad which would make the animal sick but just enough for them to survive and learn to stay away from the toads.
My Opinion: I think that it's really good the scientists have found a way to save the quolls. If they hadn't found a way then not only could the quolls become extinct but many other species that were eating the toads could also become endangered and then eventually extinct. Also, this never would have happened if Australia hadn't placed the toads there in the first place. I don't think that we should be messing with the environment and we should leave everything how it is, unless really needed. This little incident was actually a big incident. Many animals, not just the quolls, became sick and died just because of one little toad. If we leave everything where it belongs then things like this won't happen.
Questions:
Will this be sure to save the quolls or will they not retain the information and keep eating the toads?
Will the scientists be able to save all the other animals that become endangered because of the cane toads?
What happens if the toads population increases?
When do scientists know for sure that an animal is going to be alright?
This article is a good representation of what happens when we mess with the environment for our personal interests. Because people wanted to save the cane plant, they added an animal to the ecosystem that ended up harming many other animals in the area. It is really sad that the quoll might become endangered because of a bad decision.
ReplyDeleteIn response to question 1, I think that like the other animals, quolls will learn to stay away from the toads and their population will bounce back. This would be a very good thing!
Gee, I did this article about cane toads for my exotic species paragraph! I really enjoyed reading an article that was about the same topic but had a different perspective on it. I think that this process will help the quolls that were in the test not eat these toads, but I'm not quite sure if this will help all the other quolls that were not a part of this experiment. Scientists may be able to save some of the quolls, and they proabaly can save most of the other animals that become endangered because of these toads. It all demends on how amny animals become endangered because if many becaome endangered at once, it is going to be much, much harder to save them all. If the toad population increases, then the population for the animals that the toads are effecting will go down unless scientists find a way to help these animals. In the event that scientists can save the animals that begin to become endangered, then there will be this great, huge, overpowering population on these cane toads and humans will have to find a way to make their population smaller. Lastly, I don't think that a scientist ever really knows whether an animal is going to be alright or not. It all depends on the variables and experimants that they try and even if an experiment results in one thing, that may not be the result that actually occured in real life.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is just one of the many reasons that we shouldn't mess with the environment and leave it how nature had intended it. It seems all humans have done is create more problems for the environment than improvements. Don't get me wrong, we are doing great things to help the environment, but would we have these issues if humans hadn't caused some of it? This article is really interesting, the quolls are suffering from something we originally thought would have helped us, but at least we are making progress in fixing the problem.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your question, "What happens if the toads population increases?" I think that if the toad population increases and the attempts to fix our problem with the quolls does not work then the quolls will eventually become extinct. The more toads there are, the more possibility that a quoll will eat one.
I just wanted to add to what I said before...
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Annemarie said about how its our fault that we have to fix everything. Somebody does something to help them, then everybody else tries to fix it because it ended up harming an animal. It doesn't seem fair that so many animals are becoming endangered becuase of us. I also agree with Maddy regarding the quolls ability to retain information. Although I said before that they would be like other animals and remember, after reading what Maddy said I have realized that this will only be for the quolls in the experiment. The other quolls will continue to eat the toads and die, just like they did before. Then the scientists will need to come up with another plan or teach more quolls not to eat the frogs.
Hey guys, geat article. I completely agree with your opinions about saving the qualls. This experiment the scientists tested has proven to be a good one. If they continue to teach the qualls notto eat the frogs, they might eventually come out of the endangered category. I hope this experiment can be then tested on other species with similar problems to help them from becoming extinct.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question "Will the scientists be able to save all the other animals that become endangered because of the cane toads?" I think they can certainly save any animals that became endangered from eating these toads. Howerver i do not believe they can sve all the animals that are being eaten by the toads. Especially because their population has dramatically increase over thepast years.