{"id":24795,"date":"2019-09-24T19:52:44","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T09:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=24795"},"modified":"2019-09-24T19:52:46","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T09:52:46","slug":"eat-your-heart-out-native-water-rats-have-worked-out-how-to-safely-eat-cane-toads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=24795","title":{"rendered":"Eat your heart out: native water rats have worked out how to safely eat cane toads"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"754\" height=\"566\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Native_Water_Rat.jpg\" alt=\"Native Water Rat\" class=\"wp-image-24796\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Native_Water_Rat.jpg 754w, https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Native_Water_Rat-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Australia\u2019s water rats, or Rakali, are one of Australia\u2019s beautiful but lesser-known native rodents. And these intelligent, semi-aquatic rats have revealed another talent: they are one of the only Australian mammals to safely eat toxic cane toads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our research, published today in Australian Mammalogy, found water rats in Western Australia adapted to hunt the highly poisonous toads less than two years after the toads moved into the rats\u2019 territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rats, which can grow to over 1kg, are the only mammal found to specifically target large toads, neatly dissecting the toads to eat their hearts and livers while avoiding the poisonous skin and glands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/eat-your-heart-out-native-water-rats-have-worked-out-how-to-safely-eat-cane-toads-123986\">https:\/\/theconversation.com\/eat-your-heart-out-native-water-rats-have-worked-out-how-to-safely-eat-cane-toads-123986<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australia\u2019s water rats, or Rakali, are one of Australia\u2019s beautiful but lesser-known native rodents. And these intelligent, semi-aquatic rats have revealed another talent: they are one of the only Australian mammals to safely eat toxic cane toads. Our research, published today in Australian Mammalogy, found water rats in Western Australia adapted to hunt the highly &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=24795\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Eat your heart out: native water rats have worked out how to safely eat cane toads&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24797,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24795\/revisions\/24797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}