Who waves what at whom, and to what effect, are the central questions in a study called Deceptive Digits: The Functional Significance of Toe Waving by Cannibalistic Cane Toads, Chaunus Marinus. Professor Richard Shine, of the University of Sydney, and his postdoc student Mattias Hagman published this nine-page report in the journal Animal Behaviour.
The cane toad, they muse, “is one of the most intensively studied anuran species worldwide … It is thus remarkable that the distinctive toe waving behaviour of this species has not been reported in earlier literature.” This is the toad Australians have loved to hate ever since the 1930s, when it was imported from Hawaii to prey on certain agriculturally annoying beetles. Because nothing much in Australia is keen to eat cane toads, the warty immigrants have bred themselves into multitudes ever increasing.
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.