Australia Discovered an Ant That Hunts Cane Toads — Scientists Couldn't Believe What They Saw

Ajouté : 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]A crack squad of toad killers has a bold plan to stop the amphibious a-holes [music] from reaching the precious pilgrim.

[00:00:06]>> Australia was losing the war against one of the most toxic invaders on Earth until something tiny stepped up to the plate. Everyone is obsessed with the huge snakes and crocodiles [music] that fall victim to the cane toad. But the real kicker is that a small ant is doing what the big guys could not.

[00:00:25]Scientists were out in the field and saw a site that felt [music] like it came from a science fiction movie.

[00:00:30]>> If we can take that water up off the ground and get it away from cane toads, then they can't soak up water through their skin, they simply can't survive.

[00:00:39]They they dry out and perish.

[00:00:41]>> A group of ants was swarming a young toad and taking it out in seconds. You are going to see how a simple can of cat food became the most important tool in saving an entire ecosystem from a poison hop of doom.

[00:00:57]Underground soldiers rising. For decades, the story of the Australian outback was a sad one where nature was slowly being choked out by a massive mistake. That mistake had a name, and it was the cane toad. These toads are famous for being so toxic that almost nothing can touch them without ending up finished. But [snorts] then everything changed when researchers in the Northern Territory noticed something strange happening near the water. They were looking at the muddy banks where thousands of baby toads were coming out of the water to start their lives. These tiny toads are about the size of a fingernail, but they carry enough poison to take out a small animal. What most people do not realize is that native Australian animals usually stay far away from them because their instincts tell them it is a bad idea. However, the scientists saw a group of meat ants doing the unthinkable. Instead of running away, the ants were charging forward. They were swarming the toadlets with a level of aggression that no one had ever recorded before. This is a key detail because it showed that the ants were not just defending their home. They were actively hunting. The ants did not just bite once and leave. They worked like a welloiled machine to pull the toad apart. See, the meat ant is a very special kind of bug that lives in large colonies across the tropical parts of the country. They are known for being tough, but nobody expected this to happen on such a large scale. When a meat ant finds a baby toad, it grabs onto a leg or the body and starts biting. The toad does what it always does to survive, which is to sit perfectly still and leak poison from its skin. Against a snake or a lizard, this works every time. The predator gets a taste of the toxin and either lets go or ends up in serious trouble. But here is the catch. The meat ants are completely immune to the poison. They do not have the same kind of heart or blood system that the poison is designed to attack.

[00:03:01]So while the toad sits there waiting for the ants to stop, the ants just keep going. It was a total mismatch that against all logic favored the tiny insect over the toxic vertebrate. As if things could not get any weirder, the scientists realized that the ants were taking out up to 98% of the toads in some areas. That is a massive number that could actually turn the tide of the invasion.

[00:03:26]The research team led by people like Georgia Ward Fear and Rick Shine spent hours watching these battles unfold.

[00:03:34]They saw that the ants would grab the toads and drag them toward the nest while they were still moving. It was a brutal sight, but for a country that has been suffering from the toad problem for nearly a century, it was a beautiful one. The [snorts] toads are most vulnerable right after they change from tadpoles into small toads, which scientists call metamorphs. During this time, they are moving slow and stay out in the open sun to get warm. This is exactly when the meat ants are most active. The ants use the heat to give them energy. And they use that energy to dismantle the toads one by one. This was just the beginning of understanding how we might actually win this fight. Wait, it gets better because the ants are not just random monsters. They have a very specific way of finding their prey that makes them look like trained soldiers.

[00:04:24]Hundred toad army. To understand why this ant discovery is such a big deal, we have to look back at the mess that started in 1935.

[00:04:34]Back then, farmers were having a huge problem with beetles eating their sugar cane crops. Someone had the bright idea to bring in 102 cane toads from Hawaii to eat the beetles. It turns out that was a mistake of epic proportions. The toads did not even like the beetles because the beetles lived high up on the cane stalks and the toads stayed on the ground. Instead of helping, the 102 toads started doing what toads do best, which is eating everything else and having thousands of babies. Fast forward to the part where those original toads turned into a population of over 200 million. They spread across thousands of miles, moving at a speed of nearly 40 miles every single year. They moved into the Northern Territory, Western Australia and New South Wales, like an unstoppable green wave. The real problem is that Australia is an island continent that was cut off from the rest of the world for millions of years. The animals there evolved in a very specific way, and they never had to deal with a toad that produces a hearttoppping poison.

[00:05:39]When a native qual snake sees a cane toad, it just looks like a big juicy meal. But as soon as they bite down, the poison glands behind the toad's head release a white slime that is full of toxins.

[00:05:54]Within minutes, the predator is gone.

[00:05:57]This has caused the populations of some native species to drop by more than 90% in the areas where toads arrive. It is an ecological disaster that has lasted for decades. Many are not seeing the truth here, which is that the toads are not just eating the food, they are changing the entire landscape by taking out the top predators. When the snakes and lizards are gone, other pests start to grow out of control. Everyone is obsessed with finding a high-tech solution to this problem. People have tried building fences that are hundreds of miles long, and they have tried making special traps. Some scientists even thought about changing the toad's genes so they could not have babies anymore. But those ideas are expensive and hard to do in the middle of a wild desert. Basically, the country was looking for a silver bullet, but only finding more frustration. [music] So, here is the deal. The discovery of the meat ant was the first time anyone saw a native animal that could actually stand up to the toads without any help from humans. It was a natural response to an unnatural problem. The ants did not need to be trained or genetically modified. They were already there waiting in the dirt for something to crawl past their nest. But there was a catch they did not see coming because the toads were moving into areas where the ants were not very common yet.

[00:07:21]Canned food solution.

[00:07:24]Just when you thought it was over and the toads would win, the scientists came up with a plan that was so simple it sounded crazy. They knew the ants like the toads, but they needed more ants in the right places at the right time. So, they decided to use something that every cat owner has in their kitchen. They took cans of cheap cat food and placed them near the edges of the ponds where the baby toads were about to emerge. It turns out that meat ants absolutely love the smell of fishy cat food. Within minutes of opening the cans, the ground was crawling with thousands of extra ants. They came from all over, following the scent trails and setting up a perimeter around the water. This was where the story takes a hard left into a full-on battle zone. When the tiny toads started crawling out of the water, they did not find a quiet beach. They found an army of meat ants waiting for them.

[00:08:17]Because there were so many ants attracted by the cat food, the baby toads had zero chance of escape. In the areas where the scientists put out the bait, the number of ants went up by more than four times. This meant that the predation rate went through the roof. It was one of the most overlooked aspects of the study, which is that we can actually help native species fight back by giving them a little boost. Hands down, this was the most effective way to protect specific areas like national parks or the backyards of people living in Polar. By spending just a few dollars on cat food, researchers were able to eliminate nearly every single baby toad that tried to leave the pond. But there is a massive caveat that we have to remember. This method only works on the baby toads. The adults are way too big for the ants to take down. A full-grown cane toad can weigh up to four lbs and is about the size of a dinner plate.

[00:09:12]They are huge, tough, and have skins like leather. An ant trying to bite a giant toad would be like a human trying to bite a mountain. However, taking out the babies is a key detail because it stops the next generation from growing up. If you stop the babies, you eventually stop the population from growing. It is a long game, but it is one that the ants are winning. The plot took a major turn when other people started trying this in their own local areas. It became a community effort to bait the ants and save the native frogs.

[00:09:46]Nobody saw this coming, but the toad started to show some weird behaviors when they realized the ants were around.

[00:09:55]Shadowy science plot. Looking back, there are still many rumors in the air about how this whole toad situation got so bad and if the ants were really a natural discovery. Some people in the conspiracy world think the original release in 1935 was not just a mistake for the farmers. There are theories that it was a deliberate test of how an invasive species could destroy a food chain. Some even say that the meat ants were modified in a lab to be more aggressive, but that is putting it lightly compared to some of the other stories. There is a lot of people are confused about why it took 70 years to notice that ants eat toads. They think that maybe the information was kept secret while people tried to sell more expensive solutions. While there is no evidence for this, the drama has to be even increased when you look at how perfectly the ants fit into the puzzle.

[00:10:47]There are whispers that the government was looking into using the ants as a biological weapon against other pests before the toad problem became famous.

[00:10:56]Some people believe that there are missing files from the 1950s [music] that talk about the meat ants ability to ignore poisons. If that is true, then the researchers today are just rediscovering something that was already known. Here is the part that everyone misses. The meat ant is so successful that some fear it could become a problem itself. If we make the ant colonies too big, will they start taking out native birds or other beneficial insects? It is not that simple, though, because the ants are already part of the system.

[00:11:28]They have lived in Australia for thousands of years, long before the toad showed up. Against all logic, some people even think the toads and the ants are part of a larger plan to redo the entire Australian environment. They point to the fact that the toads are now evolving longer legs to move faster [music] across the desert. At the same time, the ants seem to be getting better at finding toad ponds. It looks like a war that was designed to happen. But that is only half the story. The truth is that nature usually finds a way to fix the mistakes that humans make, even if it takes a long time. The meat ants are just the first native species to figure out that the toads are actually made of meat and can be eaten if you are tough enough. It all came crashing down when people realized that the ants were not the only ones starting to fight back.

[00:12:20]Australia is fighting back with an army of ants. But is it enough to save the continent? What do you think will happen next in this war? Subscribe for more nature mysteries.