OTTAWA CITIZEN (Ontario) 25 September 13 Live frogs star in new show at Canadian Museum of Nature (Tom Spears)
Ottawa: The most colourful frogs in Ottawa are also the smallest. And the most poisonous.
Known as poison dart frogs, they come from South America and are part of the new frog exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Nature.
Fifteen glass cases, 18 species, more than 80 live frogs, and only the little guys are poisonous. The name gives them away; South American tribes coat darts with their poison.
Zookeeper Leslie Thompson handles them without a care in the world, even though one such frog can carry enough poison to kill 10 people. She knows their secret, which is that the frogs only produce poison if they first eat insects containing a toxin themselves.
These ones don’t. They get fruit flies. “Which is good for me, considering there are 20 of them in that exhibit,” Thompson said. “It’s hard to keep an eye on all of them at once.”
She makes her rounds with live crickets and other frog food in the early mornings, when both nocturnal frogs and their day-shift cousins are alert enough to eat.
Some of the frogs can only see crickets that move, but the crickets haven’t figured out the obvious strategy. They wiggle around until a tongue slurps them up. It’s surprising how fast a frog can be when motivated.
“Frogs — a Chorus of Colours” is visiting until May 11 from Reptiland in Pennsylvania. The exhibit was here briefly in 2010, but it was easy to miss in the hoopla of the grand reopening and big whales on display.
There’s a fee for the third-floor exhibit: $4 on top of regular admission. And don’t even think about trying to sneak your kids through the rest of the museum without them noticing the frogs. Advertising is prominent, with big pictures.
The frogs are displayed in habitats designed to mimic their native surroundings, with real plants and little waterfalls and pools against the backdrop of “constructed” tree trucks and roots.
All, Thompson swears, have distinct personalities.
Many climb, either on the branches (Chinese gliding frogs, named for the webbed toes that help them glide from branch to branch) or on the glass itself. Some frogs can stick to anything at all, except Teflon.
Others, like the African bullfrog that weighs almost a kilogram, sit camouflaged on the ground and wait for lunch to come to them. She calls him Jabba, and he does look like the Star Wars character.
“That guy could not climb a tree to save his life,” Thompson said.
“It will swallow anything. That guy is basically nature’s garbage disposal. As long as it’s meat, it’s on the menu.”
She calls another frog Ahnold — not Arnold, but Ahnold — because of his big muscles.
“It’s really hard to ignore frogs for their appeal to both children and adults,” said Mark Graham, the museum’s vice-president of research and collections.
He called the exhibit “visually stunning and vocally interesting.”
The frogs in the cases don’t have much to say, but there are recordings of different species that children can play. And for those who remember high school biology with fondness there’s a virtual dissection. (Click on the scalpel and the photo opens up to show the frog innards.)
But the stars of this show are the live animals, a tiny segment of the 4,800 frog species around the world.
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