The fourth-graders at McNair Discovery Learning Academy could spout facts about the Cane toad for days.
“They can lay 36,000 eggs at a time,” 9-year-old fourth-grader Semora Lazenby said.
“The toad eats anything fitting in its mouth, including lizards, snakes and crocodiles,” 9-year-old fourth-grader William Clark said.
“After they hatch, it takes between 12 and 60 days to grow,” 10-year-old fourth-grader Genesis Williams said.
The students are learning all they can about the Cane toad, an invasive species found mostly in Australia, so they can develop prototypes for humane traps to catch and eliminate the species from the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge swamp in South Georgia.
If they’re successful, McNair principal Brian Bolden says school partners hope to make the best student project into an actual trap, using them at the swamp.
“We’ve reached out to an engineering partner,” Bolden said Wednesday morning. “If (the childrens’) devices make sense, they can be turned into something really useful.”
According to the children, Cane toads, their tadpoles and their eggs are poisonous and can kill many animals that try to eat them. While they cannot penetrate human skin, their poison can kill humans who come into contact with it. The information also was verified through an encyclopedia and online searches.
The swamp has become overrun with the toads, which reduce the other populations of wildlife through poisoning and eating them.
Tanisha Taylor, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) teacher at McNair Discovery Learning Academy, said the students have been very meticulous in their research, which shows in the devices they’ve built to trap the frogs.
“We’ve contacted Okefenokee and told them we were doing this,” she said. “The kids are working diligently on ways to stop the toads. They want to trap (the toads) and run tests on them to see what they can do to stop them.”
One group had a cardboard box with an opening that, once the frog enters, immediately closes it inside the box, with dragonflies and a mouse for food. Holes have been poked into the side of the box for ventilation.
“It’s attracted to man-made light,” Semora Lazenby said, motioning to where one would go on her team’s project.
Another has a blue tarp over the opening. Once a toad is inside, a rubber band pushes it deeper inside the box, covered at the top by plastic wrap with holes in it for ventilation. Flies and other things inhabit the trap so the toad can continue eating.
Other projects could come from interaction with the toad as well.
Bolden, McNair Discovery Learning Academy’s principal, said students already have been asking about the venom the toads carry in two glands on their backs and testing it for other possible uses. One student thought about the cancer battle her mother is undertaking, and wondered whether a cure could be in reach. The class had seen venom from another animal used similarly.
“We tell them all the time to turn a problem into a profit,” he said. “Not necessarily this design, but the concept that when society gives you challenges, you take those challenges and turn them into profits in some way.”
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