Mondo Knows Facts
Poison dart frogs lose their toxicity when raised in captivity
Poison frogs sequester toxins from eating wild ants and mites.
Brightly coloured poison dart frogs in South American rainforests accumulate deadly lipophilic alkaloids by consuming wild formicine ants, beetles, and millipedes. When bred in captivity on a diet of fruit flies and crickets, the frogs fail to synthesize these dietary toxins.
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Tags: poison-dart-frog, amphibian, toxins
Poison dart frogs lose their toxicity when raised in captivity: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Poison frogs sequester toxins from eating wild ants and mites. The figure is taken from San Diego Zoo, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
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- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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