Australian quarantine authorities have urged travellers through Asia to avoid bringing in hitchhiking amphibians after a passenger arrived at an airport with a dead Indonesian toad in his shoe.
The department of agriculture of water resources issued the warning on Thursday for travellers to check their luggage and other belongings for biohazards after toads from Thailand and Indonesia were found recently at three Australian airports.
The department’s head of biosecurity Lyn O’Connor says a sniffer dog reacted to a shoe that an Australian was wearing as he arrived at Cairns Airport in northeast Australia.
She says the black-spined toad found by a biosecurity officer inside the shoe had only recently died and was probably alive when the passenger put the shoe on in Indonesia.
