Mystery in the pond: A thousand toads exploded in the middle of the night, and the culprit turned out to be...

In April 2005, a small pond in Hamburg, Germany was suddenly shrouded in a dark cloud of death.

In just a few days, more than a thousand toads died here - the most bizarre thing was that they died from spontaneous "explosions" of their bodies .

How could a toad suddenly explode? To this day, this remains an unsolved mystery.

A toad mysteriously died in a pond. Unfortunately, there was no live video footage of this mysterious event. | Florian Quand/AP

Toad Explosion Tragedy

The victims of this mysterious incident were all giant toads (Bufo bufo), one of the most common toad species in Eurasia.

According to witnesses, the toads first crawled out of the water onto the shore, twitched, and then their bodies swelled dramatically within 10 minutes, growing to three and a half times their original size , while making "painful, twisted croaking noises."

Finally, their swollen bodies suddenly burst and their internal organs even sprayed out a meter away. "It was like a scene from a science fiction movie," commented Werner Smolnik, a staff member of the Hamburg Nature Conservation Association.

Giant toad (Bufo bufo) | Wikipedia

The strange deaths mainly occurred at night and dusk, and were most frequent between 2 and 3 a.m. The toads did not die immediately after they exploded. Even though their internal organs had already flown out of their bodies, they were still struggling to the end, and finally died a few minutes later.

Rumors spread

The mysterious toad explosion soon attracted the attention of news media from all over the world. In the reports, this small pond was exaggeratedly called the "Pond of Death".

Various speculations quickly spread. Some said that the toads died of an unknown infectious disease, which may have come from a nearby racetrack; some said that their abnormal behavior was due to dangerous pollutants in the pool water; and some even said that the toads had launched a kind of "suicide" explosion of their own volition.

Apart from the unfortunate toad, there were no signs of other creatures being affected by the incident, but local health officials were still nervous. Police temporarily blocked the pond due to concerns about possible infectious diseases.

A pond temporarily blocked off | AP

The Hamburg Institute for Health and the Environment quickly launched an investigation. Researchers collected water samples and toad carcasses and conducted careful analysis. However, they found no toxic chemicals, suspected fungi, bacteria or new viruses. The investigation into the incident came to a standstill.

The culprit is…

The investigation was eventually taken over by Frank Mutschmann, an amphibian expert who performed autopsies on toads that died in the explosion in his laboratory in Berlin and claimed to have found the culprit.

During the autopsy, Mutzman found three important clues. First, there were small round wounds on the backs of the victim toads, which seemed to be the size of bird beaks. Second, the livers of many toads were missing. Third, there were no bite marks or scratches on the toads, which showed that they were not attacked by mammals such as rats and raccoons.

Combining this information, Mutzman came to his conclusion: these "self-exploding" toads were actually killed by crows.

Is the crow to blame? | pixabay

Mutzmann speculates that these clever birds have developed a special technique for catching toads: They carefully pierce the toads' body cavities and precisely extract and eat their livers, which he believes allows them to avoid exposure to toxins on the surface of the toads' skin while still getting the most calorie- and nutrient-dense parts of the toads.

According to Mutzman's assumption, the victim toad's "self-explosion" is the result of their defensive reaction and physical injuries. When threatened, toads often inhale a lot of air to swell their bodies into a ball, which makes them look bigger and more difficult to swallow. However, if the toads swell up after being pecked by crows, their damaged body cavities cannot withstand the high pressure of expansion, and the final result may become a body "explosion".

The incident happened during the toad's breeding season, and the toads gathered in the pond were perhaps too focused on finding mates and were slow to react to the birds pecking at them - so people only saw the injured toads in pain and failed to notice the crows that had fled the scene.

This speculation seems to explain everything reasonably - but the problem is that there is no definite evidence to support it. No one has ever seen a crow pecking at a toad's liver, and ornithologists are also skeptical about this speculation.

In the end, the pond tragedy came to an end quietly amid doubts, and to this day, people still cannot be sure who was the culprit that caused the toad's tragic death.

The only thing to be thankful for is that as the storm subsided, the number of toads in the pond returned to its previous level. In this unknown small pond, the toad survivors lived a peaceful life again.

References

[1] https://www.nabu.de/news/2005/03698.html

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C3%B6tenexplosionen_in_Hamburg

[3] https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/hamburger-tuempel-raetsel-um-explodierende-kroeten-geloest-a-353749.html

[4] https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/kroetenteich102_page-2.html

[5] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4486247.stm

[6] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.308.5723.788a

[7] https://www.odditycentral.com/animals/a-fascinating-story-of-exploding-toads-and-clever-crows.html

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_animal

Author: Window Knocking Rain

Editor: Luna

Cover image source: Florian Quand/AP