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Amid Agony, Scientists Discover World's First Venomous Frog

sciencehabit writes: Some discoveries come with a price, and Brazilian biologist Carlos Jared's discovery of the world's first known venomous frog came with agony. When Carlos picked up a Brazilian hylid frog—a small, lumpy, green amphibian—while doing fieldwork, the frog raked him with spines hidden within its upper lip across the hand. He dropped the frog, and excruciating pain shot up his arm for the next 5 hours. It was known that some frogs secrete poison onto their skin but this species has tiny spines on their heads and upper lips that enable them to inject lethal venom directly into the bloodstream. C. greening's venom is twice as potent as that of the deadly pit viper, the researchers report.

3 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Frogs by JMJimmy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Meanwhile some Amazon tribes have been using frog venom on their arrows and blowpipe darts for thousands of years...

    And theres probably some joke about Jeff Bezos patenting it...

    Apparently you didn't read the summary let alone RTFA - they are talking about injectable venom, like a snake.

  2. Re:Frogs by Flavianoep · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's not venom unless the animal carrying it have means to actively inject it in its victims or enemies. What the Indians have been using is poison.

    --
    Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
  3. Re:Frogs by Flavianoep · · Score: 3, Informative

    The meaningful distinction is between poisonous animals and venomous ones. I guess I don't need to explain to you the implications on survival strategy that those two features entail.

    But the GP seemed to make fun of scientists for discovering now what the Indians have known for ages. The case is that scientists know about poisonous frogs for a very long time, you know, by talking to the very Indians that have been using frog poison for ages.

    By the way, AFAIK, you can not call a poison a venom just because if it's in a man made pointed object, because such an object is not a biological structure and therefore the human bearing it is not venomous.

    --
    Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.