Scientists Discover Venomous Frogs— the Hard Way

One gram of frog's venom is enough to kill 80 humans
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 9, 2015 9:18 AM CDT
Scientists Discover Venomous Frogs— the Hard Way
Greening's frog, one of two Brazilian species recently discovered to be venomous.   (Carlos Jared)

Miss Piggy's split with Kermit wasn't the only painful frog-related news this week. Researchers have released their findings on the world's first known venomous frogs, whose abilities were only discovered when one of them stung a researcher's hand, leaving him with what a colleague calls "intense pain, radiating up the arm, lasting for five hours," LiveScience reports. While plenty of frogs secrete poison, these two species of Brazilian frogs are the first known to have a method for injecting that poison into other animals, which classifies them as venomous, according to the findings published in Current Biology. The Greening's frog and Bruno's casque-headed frog use bony spines on their noses, jaws, and heads to jab anything that grabs them.

Luckily for the researcher, he was jabbed by the—relatively—less toxic Greening's frog, which could only kill approximately six humans with one gram of its venom, notes LiveScience. On the other hand, Bruno's casque-headed frog could potentially off about 80 humans with the same amount of venom, making it 25 times more lethal than Brazil's feared pit vipers. According to CBC News, the frogs' defenses are seemingly pretty successful because they have no known predators. While these Brazilian frogs are the first known examples of venomous amphibians, researchers are now looking for more around the world. (For more venomous animals, take a journey to "the world's deadliest island.")

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