Comment by tkcranny

The Economist wrote about this recently too [1]. The most fascinating part is how they’re evolving to spread faster and faster:

Attempts to control the toads have been going on for decades, yet their advance has accelerated. In the tropics, they now travel up to 70km westward every wet season, compared with 10km when they first arrived. They are thus poised to enter some of Western Australia’s most treasured ecological areas.

Toad biologists call this acceleration the Olympic Village effect. It is a superb example of evolution in action. Only the most athletic toads make it to the invasion front, where they breed. Over the generations, toads on the front have thus developed larger size, longer legs and even an urge to travel in a single direction.

[1] https://economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/01/22/gene...