Scientists suggest using a pond of Mexican Burrowing Toads as a cheap alternative to multi-billion dollar gravitational wave detectors.
April 1, 2026
Original Paper
Mexican Burrowing Toads as gravitational wave detectors
arXiv · 2603.29334
The Takeaway
The paper claims these toads have a specialized ability to sense magnetic fields that could allow them to 'hear' ripples in spacetime from colliding black holes. By monitoring the phase shifts in a toad chorus, researchers believe they could detect cosmic events that facilities like LIGO might miss.
From the abstract
It is generally assumed that gravitational waves are extremely difficult to detect. However, we show that the call of the Mexican Burrowing Toad has an amazing resemblance to cosmic gravitational wave signals due to the merging of neutron stars and/or black holes. It is known that toads exhibit magnetoreception - the ability to detect magnetic fields - and that magnetic fields thus subtly affect ion channel activities in toad neurons. We speculate that gravitational strains produce phonons and m