A taste for toxins
Researchers have identified a protein that may help a poison dart frog collect toxins from food and transport them to the frog’s skin, Erin Garcia de Jesús reported in “How poison dart frogs hoard toxins in their skin” (SN: 2/10/24, p. 4).
Poison dart frogs eat toxic insects. Reader Robert Schier wondered about when frogs eat a nontoxic diet: “Do they not have poisons in their skin?”
In the wild, poison dart frogs chow down on insects that may pick up toxic alkaloid compounds from plants. In captivity, the frogs are fed nontoxic food, and they don’t have poisonous skin, Garcia de Jesús says.
