4/21/2006: Toad with tail
 

http://cellar.org/2006/toadwithtail.jpg

I'd never seen this before 20 Minutos had it as one of their images of the day recently. This toad's tail is 40 cm long, found in Tangkak, in southern Malaysia.

It looks like a fake, but probably isn't: who can you trust if not a news source in a language you can't read?

What relief that this is only a shot of a freak genetic mutation. When I first saw the thread title, I thought it was going to be a picture of Undertoad with a hooker, and I just couldn't figure out how he was going to explain that to Jacquelita.

Reminds me of when the cat eats a piece of string. I wonder if the toad thinks something is chasing him and freaks out too?

that is weird. It looks like he swalowed a snake and its giving him a bad case of hemorrhoids as it comes out.

But seriously, from what I understand amphibians grow in a unique way. fingers grow from stubs, rather than like mammals which have tissue disolve away between digits during formation. the end results are similar, but the process is completely different. Also some reptiles never really stop growing and dont have an actual growth limit like many other creatures. So if this is real, maybe it has something to do with the growth process from some messed up dna so instead of telling it to stop growing the tail so as to be unnoticeable as normally would be the case, it starts to grow this tail. It wouldnt be a result of new dna, but rather the loss of normal control due to loss or change in existant dna, hence the incredible length of its tail. just a theory.

Of course maybe its just a hack job of a snake and a toad stuck together for tv.

who knows?

Weird.

That mental image is going to stick with me for awhile.

:lol2:

Oh yeah, reminds me of christmas and pulling incredibly long tinsel string out of a cat's throat when you think its just a little peice in his teeth. or looking up to see the cat dragging a long peice of tinsel out of his butt after he leaves the kitty box, but the tinsel just doesnt want to come out all the way! :eek6:

so I'm wondering if they can drop them -- like some lizards (reptiles) -- and grow a new one.

We had a cocker spaniel who liked to eat kleenex. One incident resulted in her being known as "Old kleenex butt" for a while.

If it was a fake, I would think they would clean up the background.

Tail is probably functionless and doesn't move. Otherwise toads detect insects by movement.

So this toad has to spend his whole life within 40 cm of an electrical outlet? :rolleyes:

I found a toad with a tail once, but it wasn't 40 centimeters long...

This is another one of those evolution gone awry, end of the world signs, isn't it ...

In humans, it's called coccygeal retroposition