May. 1st, 2005 08:44 pm
Erdkrötensterbensbericht
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muckefuckAt dinner, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bunj was questioning the validity of the widely-circulating "exploding toads" story, since all he could find were links to the same English-language AP reference; searches against German sources seemed to turn up nothing. Dropping "Hamburg" and "Teich" ("pond") into Google, I got this link to the City of Hamburg page. (Précis: Toad and water samples tested at the Institut für Hygiene und Umwelt showed no abnormalities.) The headline gave me the useful compound "Krötensterben" ("frog/toad death"), which led directly to an article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung detailing the current "liver-extracting crows" theory. (In a nutshell: Crows pierce the toad's body to get at the tastiest part, the toad swells up in self-defence, and the resulting pressure blows all his internal organs out through the hole in his abdomen.)
By popular demand, my next web research project is to find a chart detailing the historical links between the Jacobite/Melchite/Syro-Malabar/etc. churches. (Yes,darkphuque, I know you provided an excellent summary in this very journal of Orthodox sectarian genealogy, but I didn't add it to Memories and I'm damned if I can locate it now.)
bunj was questioning the validity of the widely-circulating "exploding toads" story, since all he could find were links to the same English-language AP reference; searches against German sources seemed to turn up nothing. Dropping "Hamburg" and "Teich" ("pond") into Google, I got this link to the City of Hamburg page. (Précis: Toad and water samples tested at the Institut für Hygiene und Umwelt showed no abnormalities.) The headline gave me the useful compound "Krötensterben" ("frog/toad death"), which led directly to an article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung detailing the current "liver-extracting crows" theory. (In a nutshell: Crows pierce the toad's body to get at the tastiest part, the toad swells up in self-defence, and the resulting pressure blows all his internal organs out through the hole in his abdomen.)By popular demand, my next web research project is to find a chart detailing the historical links between the Jacobite/Melchite/Syro-Malabar/etc. churches. (Yes,
darkphuque, I know you provided an excellent summary in this very journal of Orthodox sectarian genealogy, but I didn't add it to Memories and I'm damned if I can locate it now.)![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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