Scientists looking into the deaths of dogs on Auckland's eastern beaches are hoping to breed sea slugs to see if they produce a certain toxin.
Five dogs died after visiting the beaches, with one of the deaths confirmed as being linked to sea slugs containing tetrodotoxin.
The technical manager of the Cawthron Institute, Paul McNabb, says they want to study the slugs to see if they produce tetrodotoxin in the lab.
If they do, he says, it will show they did not get the toxin from elsewhere and would make it a lot less likely that other organisms contained it.
