‘Toadzilla’ captured at national park in Australia. Take a look at 6-pound monster

An Australian park ranger following a snake is being credited with catching what might be the world’s biggest toad.

Dubbed “Toadzilla,” the cane toad weighed in at 2.7 kilograms, or 5.95 pounds. That’s bigger than the current world record of 2.65 kilograms, as reported by Guinness World Records.

“Rangers conducting track work in Conway National Park, near Airlie Beach, were shocked to find this massive cane toad beside the Conway Circuit last week,” Queensland Environment reported in a Jan. 19 Facebook post.

“Ranger Kylee Gray said a snake slithering across the track forced them to stop their vehicle, and when she stepped out and looked down, she gasped when she saw the monster cane toad.”

Gray then did something a lot of people might consider crazy when it comes to toxic creatures: “I reached down and grabbed the cane toad and couldn’t believe how big and heavy it was,” Gray said in the news release.

Video shows she wisely wore gloves and displayed the toad with its back legs restrained. She also kept it away from her body.

The monster toad was “removed from the wild” and the Queensland Museum is interested in taking control of it, officials said. Conway National Park is in northeast Australia, about 550 miles northwest of Brisbane.

Cane toads are an invasive species in Australia and known for being “poisonous, predatory, adaptive and competitive.” The species hosts skin-gland secretions that “are highly toxic and can sicken or even kill animals that bite or feed on them,” experts say. Those same secretions can “irritate the skin or burn the eyes of people who handle them.”

“A cane toad this size will eat anything it can fit into (its) mouth, and that includes insects, reptiles and small mammals,” Queensland Environment wrote.

“Some cane toads can get to 26 cm, weighing 2.5 kg. ...‘Toadzilla’ may be the largest (cane) toad on record.”

This story was originally published January 20, 2023 at 6:20 AM with the headline "‘Toadzilla’ captured at national park in Australia. Take a look at 6-pound monster."