Sunday 3 April 2016

The World's Most Poisonous Inhabitant,

and it is so small!


a single golden poison frog (Phyllobates terribilis) harbours enough poison to kill 10 grown men, making these frogs perhaps the most poisonous animals alive, they are one of many species of toxic frogs, which are known as poison dart frogs, they are all small, the largest are no more than 6cm long, and some are just 1.5 cm, the poison they excrete through their skin is called batrachotoxin, by weight, batrachotoxin is one of the most potent natural toxins known, it causes paralysis and death when it enters the bloodstream, even in minuscule amounts, hunters from Colombia's Embera tribe regularly hunted birds, monkeys and other small animals using poison darts, the poison comes from one of these bright yellow frogs just a few centimetres long, spotting a distracted monkey, the hunter readies his blowgun and darts, one shot will be enough, according to a first-hand account from 1825, the dart is ‘certain death to man or animal wounded by it’ to read more about this fascinating creature have a look here, and how efforts to protect its habitat started to take place back in 2012.

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