Fat, toxic toads at the leading edge of an Australian invasion have evolved longer legs than those behind the front lines, report biologists. The alarming discovery not only means the toads can spread more quickly over the continent, but it raises the possibility that under the right conditions, animal evolution can happen in just decades, not eons. That, in turn, has major implications for animals adapting to global warming, as well as biological pest control projects, which generally take for granted that carefully studied animals introduced to fight off invasive species can not evolve into something troublesome. The inexorable, seven-decade-long...
