Cane toads hitch ride on the back of a python

  • 01/01/2019
toads ride a python
Peak 'Straya. Photo credit: Caters

Forget Lime scooters - the new rage in Australia is hitching a ride on the back of a snake.

An Aussie living in Kununurra, in the far north of Western Australia, snapped what's being described as the most Australian picture ever shot - about a dozen cane toads surfing on the back of a python.

"68mm just fell in the last hour at Kununurra," Andrew Mock wrote on Twitter.

"Flushed all the cane toads out of my brother's dam. Some of them took the easy way out - hitching a ride on the back of a 3.5m python."

Paul Mock told BBC News the lake had overflowed.

"Thousands of toads were all trying to find somewhere to go, and then I saw Monty - our local python - with a bunch of hitchhikers on his back."

The snake is well-known to the Mocks.

"He hangs around back of our pool and scares my wife when she's hanging up our washing."

Cane toads are poisonous, and Monty knew better than to eat his hangers-on - even if, as one biologist tweeted, they may have been trying to mate with him.

"Male cane toads often get a bit carried away," said Jodi Rowley, curator of amphibian and reptile conservation biology at the Australian Museum.

Newshub.