POISON DART FROG |
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These beautiful frogs exude a poison that stops the heart when injected into the blood stream. Natives of their area of South America, in Brazil and Suriname, use their skin secretions to hunt monkeys by rubbing a blow dart against their skin and then firing into the monkey. Amusingly the toxin isn't the frogs'. The frog gets the poison from eating certain species of insects, but the poison isn’t the bugs’ either! The poison comes from various plants that the bugs eat which are eaten by the frog. The frog then becomes a mini-chemical factory to produce the toxins. When raised without their wild food their skins are harmless. |