Hundreds of toads have met an unexplained, explosive demise in Germany in recent days, it was reported on Saturday.

According to reports from animal welfare workers and vets as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails propelled for up to a metre. "It’s like a science-fiction film,  according to Werner Smolnik of a nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed.

"You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding,  he said. He said the bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size.

"I have never seen such a thing  said vet Otto Horst. So bad has the death toll been that the lake in the Altona district of Hamburg has been dubbed "The Pond Of Death." 

Access to it has been sealed off and every night a biologist visits between 2am and 3am, which appears to be the peak time for batrachians to go bang.

Explanations include an unknown virus, a fungus that has infected the water, or crows, which in an echo of the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds  attack the toads, literally scaring them to death.