WARNING – GRAPHIC CONTENT: The man’s video showed the toad’s muscle twitching as it breathed without its head after being spotted by the worker in Ottawa, Canada
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Canada: Headless toad spotted jumping through grass
A “zombie” toad came back to life and jumped in front of a horrified man who recorded a skin-crawling video.
He filmed the gruesome moment the bloodied amphibian appeared to be breathing without its head on the grass.
The 32-year-old, from Ottawa, Canada, came across mutilated creature at work – and was convinced that it was dead.
But the man, who wished to remain nameless, was in for a shock when the toad started hopping away from him.
“I was at work in the morning, at about 10am,” he said.
“I saw it sitting in the grass right away because the red really stood out.
The man could not believe what he was seeing
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Credit: Pen News)
Toads can function without a chunk of their brain
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Credit: Pen News)
“At first I thought it was dead for sure, but as we approached my boss nudged it with his foot and it jumped.
“We both jumped back and I let out a pretty good ‘what the?!?’.
“I got a little closer and saw the ‘breathing’, and almost felt sick.”
In the man’s footage, muscles can be seen twitching where the toad’s head used to be.
The animal is then nudged gently with a finger, causing it to prop itself up and hop away.
When it’s nudged again, it does the same thing over.
It hopped away when the man gave it a nudge with his finger
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Image:
Credit: Pen News)
The man continued: “I went back out a couple of hours later to see if it was still there, figuring it would be dead. It was in the same place, not dead.
“It did not seem to be in pain, wasn’t agitated at all and the visible breathing only sped up as I got very close.
“I was really startled by how it still seemed somewhat aware, like in the video when it turns toward me.
“As raw as the damage looked there didn’t seem to be any bleeding, and I still couldn’t imagine it wasn’t going to die very soon.”
Speaking in 2018, Emily Taylor, a professor of biological sciences at California Polytechnic State University, said it was possible for a toad to live even without a chunk of its brain.
“The brain stem governs many of the central and necessary parts of the rest of our bodies, like heart rate, digestion and other functions,” she told Live Science.
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“So, theoretically, the body can survive with only that part of the brain, even though the parts of the brain associated with consciousness, memory and decision-making are gone.”
However, the odds of a toad surviving long-term without its head are thought to be small, since it probably cannot eat or effectively escape predators.
The man who encountered the toad said he was “extremely conflicted” about what to do with it.
He said: “My best guess is that it was clipped by a lawnmower.
“There are neighbours with large, well-manicured properties just across the road, and nearby creeks and wetlands, so it’s possible it came from there.
“I’ve unfortunately seen a few get chopped up by a lawnmower before, but never any that survived it.”
He added: “I was extremely conflicted about what to do with it.
“I had to go back the next day anyway, so I went and looked for it again around noon, again thinking it must be dead by now, but it wasn’t.
“I wondered if killing it really was right, but thought that I would just be leaving it to starve if it wasn’t going to die from the initial trauma.”
In the end, he put the toad out of its misery.
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