Every once in a while you hear something like this.
BERLIN - More than 1,000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a Hamburg
pond in recent weeks, and German scientists have no explanation for what's
causing the combustion.
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 Wednesday. "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, and the toads did not appear to have a disease, she said. A
laboratory in Berlin has ruled out the possibility that it is a fungus that
made its way from South America, Kloepper said.
She said that tests will continue. In the meantime, city residents have
been warned to stay away from the pond.
