Poison Plethora
The strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio, (which comes in blue, red and yellow) gets its toxic ammunition from eating mites chock-full of nitrogen-rich compounds called alkaloids.
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The strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio, (which comes in blue, red and yellow) gets its toxic ammunition from eating mites chock-full of nitrogen-rich compounds called alkaloids. Researchers were unsure how many of these compounds end up in the frog's poison cocktail, so they compared the alkaloid content in the frog's skin glands with the that of mites inhabiting the same area. They found 42 of the frog alkaloids in the mites, according to this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
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