Cane Toads - The Conquest

Interesting insight to the plight of the Australian people and the cane toad problem, not to mention the plight of the cane toads themselves! If you like your documentaries then you will find this an easy and enjoyable watch. 3d aspects perform well with minimal ghosting.

Those Ausies do have quite a sense of drama and humour when making a documentary. Very informative and fair at the same time though. Really enjoyable and for a documentary, that's quite a surprise. Who can not laugh at a stoned dog?

A robust histology of the endemic problems that occur when introducing foreign species into the island continent of australia. Most notably with the rabbit, but this view of an transfer 80 years ago in 1937 of the cane toad and their exponential migration across the north from east to west.

Story is told from varying contributors i.e.those most affected to those with the most effect. All in all an interesting tale with the prospects for citizens facing an environmental catastrophe.

Very interesting documentaary about a real problem in Australia. This is a fun film really because of the actual people in it - an eclectic bunch of Austrialians many of whom made me laugh. It just goes to show that real human life is full of characters right out of a movie!! The toads are pretty ugly though.

This is THE example of a species artificially transferred from their native areas to an area they would have never entered naturally and causing massive issues.

Cane toads introduced from Latin America to Australia were supposed to put their enormous appetites to good effect by munching the (Sugar) Cane beetle. This beetle was causing huge damage to the sugar plantations of Queensland.

It was extraordinary bad decision. The Cane toads could never eat the beetles as they were high up in the cane fields and the grubs underground and then they multiplied... from 102 to 1. 5 BILLION. A female can unload 25,000 eggs twice each year! Compared to normal frogs 100 eggs once a year.

Pretty much the above was all I knew and hoped to gain a better understanding of what the consequences were for local wildlife, how the problem was being dealt with (if it could) and what we can learn from this.

Unfortunately more time is spent on largely irrelevant situations such as a man electrocuted spearing toads and a dog who has taken a fancy to licking them. This is oddly light hearted where all the local nature seems to be dying off everytime they take a fancy to the masses of toxic toads.

This focus on the inane leaves so many more pertinent questions unanswered:

* The toad is seemingly unstoppable however their natural range is contained within Latin America. No mention of why they are contained there.

* Its also mentioned that they were released in Hawaii but nothing is mentioned as to how they are dealing with this issue. Even mainland USA has a problem with their introduction but again no mention.

* Wikepedia indicates that local species HAVE been able to stomach them such as the Whistling Kite but nothing is mentioned about this instead they give the impression everything even the crocs are dying once eating them

* They touch on possible benefits or easier methods of killing them its very short but do not come to a conclusion.

As this is the Invasive species example I though they might touch on other examples of human interference but they are seemingly not interested in making broader points. Instead they prefer the easier goal of providing light hearted case studies that admittedly can be very funny.

Too light on detail for me.