† Golden Poison Dart Frog †

I was searching over the internet looking for information regarding vinca alkaloids, a medication in a class of anticancer drugs that inhibit cancer cell growth by stopping cell division at the mitosis stage. However one of my Google search caught my attention where the word alkaloids leads me to "Alkaloid Poison of Golden Poison Dart Frog".


So what is this little Golden Poison Frog? Yes if you can see from the picture, its gold in color and that explains its name. Its scientific name given Phyllobate Terribillis and it can be found in the rain forest at the Colombia region.


The poison carried by this frog is an alkaloid poison known as batrachotoxin. This what we called batrachotoxin is a nerve impulse inhibitor that causes prevention of nerve transmission, leaving the muscles in an inactivated form in another word: paralyze. Such effect can be life threatening because it can further leads to heart failure as well as fibrillation.


A Golden Poison Dart Frog averagely carries up to 1mg of the poison and it is believed that each 1mg of the poison is sufficient to kill up to 15 humans, or maybe 2 African bull elephants. Imagin how many humans will be killed if 1g of poison is used? Interestingly, its poison wasn't generated by itself. It is believed that such accumulation of poison is due to its long term ingestion of poisonous insects.


This little creature may be dangerous but personally I think human can be more dangerous than anything else in the world because along with the rise of human nation and development of technology, we've seen many species have becoming endangered.