As tempting as it may be to lick toads, the US National Park Service is pleading to the public to please stop.
The Sonoran Desert toad. Picture: kuhnmi/ Wikimedia Commons
Visitors to parks in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and New Mexico are home to a Sonoran Desert toad, which secrete a psychoactive toxin strong enough to kill an adult dog.
In a rather unusual Facebook post, the country’s National Park Service warned visitors to stop licking the toad, stating they have ‘prominent parotoid glands that secrete a potent toxin. It can make you sick if you handle the frog or get the poison in your mouth. As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, an unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking. Thank you.’
This toad, however, secretes a toxin with a substance called 5-MeO-DMT when it is threatened, but there are warnings that demand for this toad’s psychedelic toxins could lead to population collapse.
Licking toads for their alleged psychedelic effects was a fad in the 1980s but smoking its secretions is more popular today, according to The Smithsonian, where the secretions can be dried into crystals and smoked in a pipe.
This produces an intense hallucinating experience lasting 15-30 minutes and DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is often referred to as the “God Molecule” because of its strong psychedelic effect.
Regardless, the widespread popularity of the Sonoran Desert toads’ secretions could spell disaster for the species, where conservationists are pushing people to use synthetic alternatives. The toads only secrete these toxins under stressful and violent contexts, where people are ultimately self-medicating at the expense of another creature.
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