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"  Cane toads, throughout their 75-year march across Australia, have exhibited great skill at acceleration\u2014moving more than a mile per night during rainy season and invading up to 31 miles of new territory a year. Their range has expanded from a handful of sugar crops in 1935, where they were introduced to devour cane grubs, to more than 386,000 square miles of land. Even their evolution has accelerated. Cane toads at the &amp;quot;invasion front&amp;quot; have longer legs and larger bodies than established populations, and move more often, further and in straighter paths.  \u2028 Perhaps it was only a matter of time, then, before researchers decided to actually attach accelerometers to them. A paper published on April 22 by the journal PLoS ONE, &amp;quot;Measuring Energetics and Behaviour Using Accelerometry in Cane Toads Bufo marinus,&amp;quot; describes the first time accelerometers have been used to measure the energy expenditure of an amphibian. (They&amp;#039;ve been used on humans since the 1960s, and, thanks to miniaturization, on cormorants in 2005.) &amp;quot;Our study indicates that accelerometry is a viable method for obtaining key details about the lives of cane toads in the wild\u2014what they are doing, when they&amp;#039;re doing it, and how much food they will need to eat to fuel such a lifestyle,&amp;quot; principal investigator Lewis Halsey, of Roehampton University in London, wrote in an e-mail to PM. \u2028 This information is of interest because, as any fan of the campy 1988 documentary &amp;quot;Cane Toads: An Unnatural History&amp;quot; knows, cane toads eat everything except cane grubs and beetles, instead decimating invertebrates, lizards, frogs, birds and &amp;quot;biscuits&amp;quot; put out by sympathetic residents of Brisbane. They also breed prolifically, laying up to 40,000 eggs in a single summer. Knowing how much time and energy they need to move about in different environments will help researchers model how far and fast cane toads will spread.  \u2028   A cane toad at rest, in an air-supplied jar.  Cane toads, it turns out, are not only fruitful and toxic (best not to lick them) but also crafty, presenting an experimental challenge. They expand their lungs as a defense mechanism, meaning they puff up when one tries to, say, strap tri-axial accelerometers to their backs. (&amp;quot;Most frustrating!&amp;quot; Halsey writes.) The researchers finally struck upon pantyhose as a means of achieving a &amp;quot;firm fit on the toad&amp;quot; and slipped the data loggers underneath. Each logger, powered by a 3.6-volt lithium battery, measured temperature and three dimensions of movement: &amp;quot;sway,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;surge,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;heave.&amp;quot; The nine lucky toads that got to romp in a field deployment, in addition to lab trials, were also outfitted with miniature single-stage radiotransmitters so that they could be retrieved. \u2028 The data revealed that energy expenditure relates directly to acceleration when the toad is hopping versus at rest, and what&amp;#039;s more, suggest that the metabolic rate of toads roaming in the wild may be considerably higher than previously thought. In other words, they&amp;#039;d need to eat more to maintain their breakneck pace. Understanding this relationship, writes Halsey, and particularly how it might change in different environments, &amp;quot;is key to being able to monitor populations and also draw up management plans to support them.&amp;quot;  \u2028 That insight could come none too soon, as the director of &amp;quot;An Unnatural History&amp;quot;&amp;#039;s 3-D sequel, &amp;quot;Cane Toads: The Conquest,&amp;quot; estimates that Australia is now home to 1.5 billion individuals. In the documentary, as in life, they&amp;#039;re bigger, badder, and jumping right at you.  \u2028 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a5782/cane-toad-migration/>