and their poisonous secretions are lethal to would-be predators, including yellow-spotted goannas. In some areas, the lizards’ numbers have fallen by 90 percent. Doody started studying the ...

The yellow-spotted monitors (Varanus panoptes ... during field experiments designed to teach predatory lizards that poisonous, invasive cane toads (Rhinella marina) make a poor meal.

Cane toads spell big trouble in Australia—not just for humans, who consider them an invasive species, but for greedy, omnivorous monitor lizards, who die when they eat the poisonous toads.