HAVE LOOKED OVER THE SITE AND CAN'T FIND AN EXPLANATION FOR THE FROG AND TADPOLE REFERDENCES--PLEASE HELP

THANKS,

JIM ACHMOODY

The frog development coincides with the number of postings a particular member has contributed to the board.

Silly i know, but after 100 posts or whatever it takes to be an adult frog could you then pick your species - like Xenopus Laevis or Dendrobates auratus?

Sounds like a good idea to me!

Maturity before senility!

jim

sounds dangerous--better than boring!

jim

Stilll having difficulty with the entries for drawings options not showing up after visiting a sponser site.

jim

Poison dart frogs get their poison from ants they eat. They do not produce the poison themselves. When kept in captivity, they lose their toxins.

fascinating!

Did you know that an important member of the Dendrobatid family is Epipedobates tricolor? Epipedobates tricolor is one of the most poisonous frogs known to man, a single frog capable of knocking out a huge water buffalo. Contact with the potent secretions on the skin of the frog produces muscle paralysis and cardiorespiratory depression, eventually leading to death. In 1974, a highly toxic alkaloid called epibatidine (named after the frog) was isolated from the secretions on the skin of this Ecuadorian tree frog.

Epibatidine was shown to be over 200 times more potent than morphine in pain relief, but unfortunately was toxic to humans at therapeutic levels. Research into Epibatidine then slowed due to environmental and political reasons (the frog became endangered and frogs in captivity seemed incapable of producing the compound).

Epibatidine acts as a selective depolarising agent at neural, ganglionic and neuromuscular nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR), causing excitation of the neuron or effector cell. Studies have shown that, although Epibatidine has a high affinity for alpha-4-beta-2 nicotinic receptors in the brain, it also shows remarkable selectivity for the alpha-beta-1-gamma-delta nicotinic receptors at neuromuscular junctions. Herein lies the problem of the wide range of potent side effects such as complete muscle paralysis and pulmonary depression that has restricted Epibatidine's use in modern medicine. However, based on the study of Epibatidine, many pharmaceutical research laboratories have constructed a number of synthetic compounds, which retain Epibatidine's potent analgesic effects, but without the side effects.

see - Bradley D. Frog venom Cocktail Yields One-Handed Painkiller. Science 1993; 261: 1117.

Do all poison frogs get their toxin from ants they digest or just certain ones?

jim

i think they all get their toxicity from the insects they consume.

Poison dart frogs do not produce toxins in captivity, therefore It has been suggested that they convert the low levels of poison-alkaloids- in the insects they eat into a skin coating and parotid glands secretion that are extremely toxic.

this link

http://www.kingsnake.com/toxinology/amphibian_neurotoxin.html

give a nice overview about everything we've been discussing in theis thread.