Monday, September 21, 2009

Frogs!

I adore frogs! I think they are some of the neatest creatures. Yesterday we went to the Berkshire Museum to see the exhibit Frogs! A Chorus of Colors.

Here are some of my favorites in the exhibit:

Doesn't he/she look like a gargoyle?

Poison Frogs - The blue & white are Dyeing Dart Frogs, the yellow & black are Bumblebee Dart Frogs and the golden terrors, the Golden Dart Frog, is the most poisonous vertebrate in the world.

This is the skeleton of a Goliath Frog, the largest frog in the world.

4 comments:

Dawn said...

Cool! Isn't it amazing how the prettiest ones are the most dangerous?

Dayna Dawn Small (aka Barter) said...

Great pictures, Holly! I think frogs are really neat too. Do you know what the venom delivery mechanism is? Do they exude the toxin from the skin? Saliva? (do frogs bite?)

Oh, and how big in inches would you estimate the Goliath frog skeleton was?

okay, clearly I need to go to one of these exhibits. ;-)

Holly said...

They secret the poison from skin glands. But, poison frogs, raised in captivity away from their natural food source are actually NOT poisonous! Fed fruit flies and crickets and they are harmless. Fed the ants and beetles from their habitat in the rain forest, and the are so highly toxic, a dog can die from touching a paper towel that touched the frog!

The goliath skeleton had to be over a foot big! If you can visit an exhibit, it is definitely worth it! They also have interactive stations, where on a computer you can do a virtual disection, etc! It was very cool! (Even though I had to do an actual disection in Bio.)

Dayna Dawn Small (aka Barter) said...

Over a foot? Holy moly! And that's really interesting about environment affecting their degree of toxicity. I definitely need to find one of these exhibits.

I had to do the dissection thing in high school; I made it as far as the stomach, but as soon as the scalpel crunched into the mostly undigested fly, that was it. Done, no more, nada. Fail me if you want to, I'm DONE.