As the liver is responsible for holding the toad’s internal organs in, this caused the lungs to expand uncontrollably, leading to their rupture and the inevitable messy explosion of the toad. When the toads realized they had been attacked, their natural reaction was to puff up defensively. The brainy birds had figured out that the best part of a toad to eat was the liver, and they removed them through the toads’ backs to prevent ingesting the poison on the skin. Upon examining the corpses of recently-exploded toads, Mutschmann discovered that they all had a tiny round incision on their backs typical of those made by a crow’s beak. It turned out that the finger of blame could be squarely pointed at the area’s crow population.

This led to the area being named as the ‘Pond of Death’ by the press.Īlthough scientists were at first perplexed as to why the toads’ natural defensive reflex to expand in the face of a predator appeared to have suddenly gone horribly wrong, an expert called Frank Mutschmann finally solved the riddle. Over 1,000 toads swelled up and burst, causing their internal organs to fly out. The most well-publicized incidence of dirigible amphibians happened in 2005 around lakes in the Altona district of Hamburg, Germany. While exploding toads may sound like the work of science fiction, it’s a phenomenon that was first seen in Germany in 1968, although there have been recorded cases in Belgium, Denmark, and the USA. Here’s our round-up of the most noteworthy cases of exploding animals (including humans) throughout history.ġ0 Animals With Cannibalistic Sex Habits 10 Germany’s Bursting Toads There have even been occasions where humans have used hapless animals as bombs during warfare.

Some creatures purposefully detonate as a suicidal defense mechanism to protect other members of their colony, while others explode after death with catastrophically messy results. You may have heard of spontaneous combustion, but the phenomenon of animals literally exploding is less well-known.

Exploding Cows by Shea Cullen