Mystery of exploding toads solved

Germany's great exploding toads mystery has been solved: They were gruesomely murdered by crows with a taste for foie gras.

Health officials in Hamburg started to panic after some 1000 toads puffed up and exploded last month, their entrails splattering an area of up to a square metre.

But now one of Germany's top experts on amphibians says he's cracked the case. Frank Mutschmann found all had identical circular incisions on their backs - and their livers were missing.

"It was clearly the work of crows, which are clever enough to know the toad's skin is toxic and realise the liver is the only part worth eating," he said. "Only once the liver is gone does the toad realise it's been attacked. It puffs itself up as a natural defence mechanism.

"But since it doesn't have a diaphragm or ribs, without the liver there is nothing to hold the rest of its organs in. The lungs stretch out of all proportion and rip; the rest of the organs simply expel themselves."