You’ll find a variety of poison-dart frogs in the tropical rainforests of the Americas. They’re called “poison-dart” because aboriginal people of the Amazon extract neurotoxins from their skin, dip blow darts into it and use these darts to disable prey.
This particular type of frog is called the “Strawberry Poison-Dart Frog” (because of its red body), or more commonly “Blue Jeans” (because of its dark blue legs). The color pattern is distinctive and the bright colors are a warning to predators that the frog is toxic, although Blue Jeans is not among the most toxic of the poison dart frogs.
These frogs are tiny, about 20 mm (3/4’s of an inch) long. They live mostly on the rainforest floor and survive on a diet of ants and mites. They are found on the moist Caribbean slopes of Central America, from Nicaragua through Panama.
This one was photographed in La Fortuna, Costa Rica.
