What’s The Most Poisonous Animal On Earth?

I’m sure you’ve all wondered at some point in your life as to what the most poisonous animal on earth actually is, Well, it is in fact the Golden Poison Dart Frog. Most frogs produce skin toxins, but the poison dart frogs from Central and South America are the most potent of all. The golden poison frog, called terribilis (the terrible), is so toxic that even touching it can be dangerous. A single terribilis contains enough poison to kill 20,000 mice or 10 people.

The poison of the Terribilis is an alkaloid poison called batrachotoxin and works by causing muscle tissue to contract which eventually causes heart failure.  A single frog contains around one milligram of the poison on average.

There are over 300 species of poison dart frogs and they come in a large array of beautiful colors. It is their brilliant colors that enable them to travel the rain forests with out fear as they hunt for food.

The blue poison dart frog is one of the three poison dart frogs which supply poison used by Indians for the tips of blowgun darts. The Indians capture a number of them and will place them near the fire until the heat causes a slime to be produced on their skin. They scrape the toxic slime off and dip their darts into it to create poison tipped darts that they then use to hunt and kill for food.

Does anyone own any of these frogs? If so, send us your photos and I’ll post them on this page.