Details
Phyllobates terribilis
A small, brilliantly yellow poison frog widely regarded as one of the most toxic animals on Earth. The batrachotoxin stored in its skin is potent enough to kill several people from a single frog, and its vivid color serves as a warning to predators.
Map: Ecoregions 2017 © RESOLVE (CC BY 4.0) · Natural Earth (PD)
Endemic to the hot, perpetually wet rainforests of the Chocó region on Colombia's Pacific coast. It lives on the floor of lowland forests soaked by some of the highest rainfall on the continent, within a very small range.
The largest member of its genus, measuring roughly 4 to 6 centimeters long. Adults are a uniform, dazzling yellow, though orange and mint-green color forms also occur. Juveniles are black with golden dorsal stripes that fade to solid color as they mature.
Active by day, it lives alone, spaced evenly across the forest floor rather than gathering in groups. Males call with a trilling whistle to attract females and engage in tactile, stroking courtship.
Carnivorous, it ambushes ants along with other small insects and invertebrates on the forest floor. The compounds behind its powerful toxin are thought to be acquired through this prey.
Eggs are laid on leaf-littered ground and fertilized externally. The hatching tadpoles cling to a parent's back and are carried up into the canopy, then released into tree holes and water-filled bromeliads to develop.
Its toxin is diet-derived, and captive frogs raised on commercial insects become harmless. Indigenous Emberá people coated blowgun darts with its poison for hunting, giving the species its name. Habitat loss has driven declines, and it is listed as Endangered.
