Animal Directory Featured species in the planned Tropical Rainforest Dome habitat
Golden Poison Frog
Phyllobates terribilis
EN
Fun facts
- The most poisonous vertebrate on Earth — a single adult carries enough batrachotoxin in its skin to kill ten adult humans.
- The frog does not produce the toxin itself; it sequesters it from a diet of specific Colombian rainforest ants and beetles.
- Frogs raised in captivity on a controlled diet are entirely harmless to handle, which is how science learned the toxin's source.
- The Emberá people of Colombia historically wiped blowgun darts on the frog's back — a single frog could envenom thirty darts.
- IUCN lists the species as Endangered, restricted to a tiny patch of Pacific lowland rainforest in western Colombia.
From the master plan
The Golden Poison Frog is the planned Tropical Rainforest Dome’s unmissable small marvel — kept behind glass at the Frog House, lit so the canary-gold of its skin pops against forest leaf litter. It’s the zone’s hidden lesson on how the most dazzling colours in nature are usually a warning, not an invitation.
IUCN status sourced from the Golden Poison Frog (Phyllobates terribilis) assessment (Bolívar et al., 2004, reassessed 2017) on the IUCN Red List — listed as Endangered due to habitat loss within its tiny native range.
Find them in
Zone 05
Tropical Rainforest Dome
A lush, all-weather escape into the heart of the rainforest
Visit Tropical Rainforest Dome