Maria Allen
The poison dart frogs are among the frogs. The biological name is poison dart frog. There’s also a third name that goes well with them: color frogs.
The name poison dart frog comes from a peculiarity: on its skin, there is a poison used to poison arrowheads. The natives catch poison dart frogs. They streak their darts on the frogs’ skin and shoot them with blowguns. The prey hit will be paralyzed and can be collected.
Poison dart frogs are only found in Central America around the equator, i.e. in the rainforest. Their greatest enemy is a man because when he cuts down the rainforests, he destroys their habitat. But there are also fungi that poison dart frogs can infest. They die from it.
How do poison dart frogs live?
Poison dart frogs are very small, about 1-5 centimeters. They usually lay their spawn, i.e. their eggs, on tree leaves. There it is sufficiently humid or even wet in the rainforest. The males guard the eggs. If it ever gets too dry, they pee on it.
The male places the hatched tadpoles in small pools of water, which remain in forks of leaves. The tadpoles are not yet protected by poison. They take about 6-14 weeks to mature into proper frogs.
The frogs eat prey that contains the poison. But that doesn’t bother her body. The poison then gets on the frogs’ skin. This protects them from predators. The poison is one of the strongest in the world.
But there are also colored frogs that don’t have any arrow poison on their skin themselves. They simply profit from the others, so they “bluff”. Snakes and other enemies are warned by the color and leave the non-poisonous frog alone.