Update on the Toads: We Are Still Bamboozled

This exploding toad story's just going from bad to worse: now, it's being bandied about that malevolent birds are simply frightening the amphibians to death. Can you imagine?

Bird (popping out from behind a tree): Bou!

Toad: Oh, dear. Pop!

Bird: Not again! Ah, well. Might as well help myself to his liver. Mmm-mm-mm.

Me and Virge, we got a bit suspicious. (Virge, I suspect, was motivated by outrage over these latest slurs on his feathered minions. Or is he the minion, and they're the masters? It's hard to tell with Virge. And birds. Inscrutable Virge, and inscrutable birds. I think there's a limerick in there, somewhere.)

Anyhow, Virge's righteous indignation soon turned to suspicion: toad-innards propelling themselves metres into the air? Known carrion-birds flapping about stealing livers from living toads? And, in this age of video cellphones and keyring cameras, not a scrap of visual evidence on offer? (Extensive Google-plumbing turned up nothing more remarkable than a blurry photograph of a dead toad, clearly intact, floating belly-up in the water. No guts. No gore. No blood-matted bushes with toad-legs sticking out.)

"And what's this Hamburg Institute for Hygiene and the Environment all these articles are quoting? Does it even exist?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "Looks like all the Google results for it have to do with toads. Even us rats must confess to a certain skepticism."

"How would we check, I wonder?"

"If we had a German translation for 'exploding toads', we could run those through Google. Then, we could check the German papers. They ought to know."

I tried one of those dreadful online translation gadgets you get. It returned the following, for "exploding toad":

--which, of course, returns no relevant results at all. For a moment, I thought that was it--mystery solved, sort of thing. I mean, if no-one in Germany was talking about it, it couldn't be true, right?

"I think Germans have their own word for 'toad'," said Virge. I tried again, with a different dictionary, and got:

I typed in "explodierende Erdkröte", and got results aplenty. Virge, perusing said results, discovered a Hygiene-Institut, complete with its own webpage--which did, indeed, mention dead toads. (DING-DING-DING!) There was no mention of explosions, although we decided this might be in the interests of propriety, and minimizing public consternation, and so forth. We did, however, learn that although preliminary tests for viral and bacterial infection have come up negative, more detailed tests are in the offing.

Pending the results of said tests (or the appearance of photo/video evidence on the Internet), we are choosing to believe as follows:

* There has been a rash of bizarre and disgusting toad deaths in Hamburg. We think this involves some sort of organ rupture/exsanguination, either through an existing bodily orifice, or directly through the belly. Said rupture, while distinctly unappealing, probably does not involve toad parts sailing gaily through the air. We imagine it's more like when seagulls eat a sharp shell or a piece of glass, and their throats and bellies are sliced open from the inside. Gruesome, but hardly The 51st State gruesome.

* Birds may be eating parts of the deceased toads. We believe this is occurring post-mortem, simply because nobody's seen birds going after living toads. It also fits what we know of corvid eating habits: they like dead stuff. Filthy, filthy packbawkies.

* Since disease has not been ruled out, we think it is still a fairly likely explanation. I mean, which sounds more probable: a) holes in toads' bodies are causing them to detonate like hand-grenades, or b) sick toads are suffering gross organ trauma?

I've been doing a spot of research on my own, as well. The more I read about toads in general, and toad respiration in particular, the less I'm able to swallow the idea of one exploding when punctured. Take hognose snakes, for example. Their diet consists mainly of toads, and they've evolved special big teeth for the purpose of popping puffed-up prey. The toads inflate so the snake'll think they're too big to eat. The snake doesn't buy it, and sinks its teeth in. The toad...GOES OFF LIKE AN ATOM BOMB! No, just kidding. It deflates, and is eaten.

Then, there's the actual mechanics of toad inflation to consider. In order to puff themselves up, toads suck air into their lungs in a series of long or short breaths, then hold that air in by closing their glottal valves. When the glottal valve opens, the initial result is that air flows out of the lungs. Then, the toad sucks in through its nose, and narrows its mouth to force air into its lungs. Or, if it wants to deflate, it widens its mouth, and--whoosh--Bob's your uncle.

Now, what if there's a hole in the toad, right underneath the lung? Right where its liver ought to be, for instance? Well, let's just assume, for a moment, the worst-case scenario: pressure on the lung causes it to poke out through the hole. The toad, for some reason, doesn't reflexively stop sucking in upon feeling its lung leaving its body, and carries on trying to inflate. What happens?

1) The toad closes its glottal valve, without expelling the air. Blood and organs may be pushed out through the hole, but is there enough pressure to propel toadguts several feet into the air? Absolutely not.

2) The toad does not close its glottal valve, and keeps sucking in more air. Note that its lung is not punctured--there is no reason it should keep trying to inflate once its lung is full. Thus, this seems a little unlikely, but let's just assume it happens. The toad sucks in; pressure builds up. How does the air escape? Logic would suggest it uses the path of least resistance--back out through the mouth. Even if the displacement of other organs is causing the lung to expand to unusual dimensions, at some point, something's going to have to give. Will it be the glottal valve, or the toad's entire body? Two guesses, and the first don't count.

3) The toad does not close its glottal valve, but widens its mouth, allowing the expulsion of air. The lung begins to deflate. The worst thing that can happen at this point is that a rush of blood and organs, damaged in the initial expansion of the lung, now comes out through the hole. Still not an explosion, I'm afraid.

I could be missing something, of course. My knowledge of toad anatomy is hardly comprehensive. However, I always got excellent marks in physics (except that one time when I thought the exam was on a Thursday, but it was really on a Wednesday)--and from where I'm standing, the laws of physics don't support this whole liver-as-firing-pin hypothesis.

Oy, PZ--any help, here? Surely you know toads better than I do.