Beware! Spotted in several French departments, this little beast wreaks havoc in its path.
This little creature only measures a few centimeters, but it has frightened the authorities since it was detected in France, in the Toulouse region, last November. A species classified as invasive, it can quickly reproduce by laying between 300 to 2,500 eggs, two to three times a year. Feeding on insects, fish and amphibians, but with no known predators in France, it also enjoys a life expectancy of more than 10 years. And to make matters worse, she carries several diseases.
This is undoubtedly what pushed the Haute-Garonne prefecture to sound the alert in mid-November, in a arrested calling for its “emergency eradication”. “The presence of this species constitutes a major risk for the functioning of aquatic ecosystems”, indicates the prefecture, which specifies that it can be a healthy carrier of “ranavirus and chytridiomycosis”. These two diseases can cause high mortality among amphibians, leading authorities to say that “the colonization of water bodies by this exotic species results in an erosion of biodiversity”.
This animal is the smooth Xenopus, an amphibian of the Pipidae family, resembling a frog with a flattened body and gray-brown colors marbled with black spots. This species, native to southern Africa, only comes to the surface to breathe or feed and is most visible from April to September, when temperatures are milder. The specimens observed are quite small: males measure around 70 to 75 mm and females 30 to 90 mm.
Its arrival in France is not surprising: the smooth Xenopus was widely used as a guinea pig in the 20th century for pregnancy tests, which explains its introduction into countries outside Africa. A breeding center was also present until 1990 in Deux-Sèvres.
The closure of the latter was followed by an introduction into the natural environment, a practice now banned since an order in 2018. Its presence has, to date, been proven in Deux-Sèvres, Vienne and Maine-et -Loire, according to the National Inventory of Natural Heritage. Now, Haute-Garonne is also concerned.