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Judgment day of the toads * Toad corpse in the pond. A virus or fungus transferred from horses may have caused the phenomenon
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Werner Smolnik stepped on the edge of what was recently called the "Pool of Death" in Hamburg, and followed the results of the amphibian's doomsday. Hundreds of mutilated corpses were scattered around the pond and it was difficult to recognize the toads that were there before.
Although he is one of the top officials of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Hamburg, Smolnik was unable to prevent or even explain the unusual phenomenon of the exploding toads, which occurs in a place that was normally quiet and baffles scientists and nature lovers.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," said Smolnik, who was the first witness to the phenomenon, to the "Daily Telegraph". "Dozens of toads crawled out of the water. They swelled to three times their normal size, and made shrill noises. Then they started to explode."
Alarm horns were activated in the municipal building and emergency teams with equipment to purify chemical substances were sent to the scene, fearing that the pool and the toads were victims of industrial pollution.
The contents of the pond were pumped into a tank and the remains of the toads were taken to a laboratory for examination. The pool was closed to the public and rumors swirled in the city: Is an epidemic threatening the city? Are the toads infected with a deadly virus that, like the "bird flu", can be transmitted to humans?
Last week, about two weeks after the first explosion was observed, German biologists and people from wildlife organizations did not discover the cause of the phenomenon. About a thousand toads died within a week but the frogs were not harmed at all.
"The toads started exploding in the middle of the mating season, which lasts about a week," Smolnik told The Daily Telegraph. According to him, "It seems that this happened right after they returned to the water to spawn. Now, after the mating season is over, the phenomenon has completely stopped."
Veterinarians at the Municipal Institute for Environmental Sanitation conducted extensive tests but found no evidence of the presence of pollutants in the pond water that could have affected the toads. According to one of them, the toads may have been attacked by birds. According to her, cuts were found on many of the bodies. "We believe that birds attacked them and ate part of their guts. It is possible that the toads survived the attack and then filled with water that entered their bodies through the wounds and simply exploded."
A team of biologists from Berlin confirmed that each of the bodies examined bore puncture marks, but this explanation did not convince Smolnik. "About a thousand frogs died," he said. "If the birds were responsible for this, we would have seen them attacking en masse, but we saw nothing."
He and other conservationists believe that the toad explosion is the result of a foreign virus or fungus that entered the pond from a nearby spring, which flows in an area where horse races are held. "There are horses that came from South America, and we are afraid that they caused the water pollution," said Smolnik.
Last week the pool was still closed to the public. Heidi Meyerhofer, coordinator of the toad investigation on behalf of the municipality, said that in the past only one incident of toad explosions was recorded, although on a much smaller scale. This happened in Brandenburg in the early 90s and was then attributed to a bird attack.
For news on the subject on the website of Radio Germany
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