melbourne zoo has a long history of breeding the yellow and blue (or dying) poison dart frogs. however unfortunately in recent years the population had plummeted to just a couple of very old non-breeding individuals at melbourne and taronga. i had heard that melbourne had sent some of their frogs they had bred to sydney but in a bit of a mix-up they had sent them all the younger breedable animals and kept the old ones by mistake. taronga failed to breed their frogs and thus the population in australia virtually died out (though i was told this by a reptile-breeder who says he knows some of the keepers in melbournes reptile house and can't confirm if it is true or not). nonetheless, melbourne zoo, who have a wonderful "world of frogs exhibit" specially devoted to breeding rare amphibians (such as the coroboree frog)ajoining the reptile house, have decided to import a new group of 20 dying poison dart frogs to bolster their all-but-dead colony. in addition to this they succeeded in ammending the import list and have imported a few members of two new species of poison dart frog! isis records as follows.... Dendrobates tinctorius Yellow-and-blue poison dart frog 10.12 Dendrobates galactonotus Splashback poison dart frog 1.1 Dendrobates azureus Blue poison dart frog 3.2 lets hope they manage to breed the splashbacks and blues soon as they only aquired a very limited number of individuals. they have also placed applications for asian and argentinian horned frogs and madagascan tomato frogs (which look like the bright red fruit of which they are appropriately named after!). - did you know that captive poison dart frogs cannot produce the deadly nuro-toxins which they are so famous for and are completely harmless? they can only develop the poison from an environmental factor such as a food source which is yet known to science. awesome!
thats good news about the frogs, I wish we had a few pairs of Glass frogs in our zoos as well, its interesting stuff, plus they are cute.
