The strange story of the exploding toads

In 2005 in Hamburg-Germany, strange tales of exploding toads were being reported. Local people were claiming that thousands of toads around a certain pond were violently bursting, their entrails being thrown metres into the air in the process.
This news spread worldwide, and people all over the world were completely mystified as to why this was happening. Some claimed it was some sort of fungal disease affecting the amphibians, others claimed it was too ridiculous to be true and must be some sort of hoax. However this story was far from false, as was discovered by scientist Franz Mutschumann who decided to investigate this phenomenon.

Franz visited the site where the exploding toads had been discovered and collected their carcasses, and what he noticed after studying the bodies, was that every single one that had exploded was missing its liver. He also noticed that there was a small hole on the back of the frogs, which appeared to have been made by a bird.

It turned out that the exploding toads was the work of Crows. These birds had discovered the nutrient rich organs found within the toads, and would peck through their soft bodies and remove and eat the livers, leaving the rest of the body intact. The natural defence mechanism of these toads is to inflate their bodies with air to look more intimidating when threatened, but due to a lack of liver and the huge hole that now existed in their bodies, as they filled with air their lungs and blood vessels would rupture, causing them to explode.

This explains why the toads had been exploding, but why were the crows only removing the liver, and not eating any other part of the body. Well the skin of these toads is highly toxic, and the liver is the only part of the amphibians that are good for the crows to eat. Somehow these highly intelligent birds worked out that by pecking through the skin and taking one part of the toad, they were able to eat without a risk of ingesting deadly toxins.

-Thomas Glen