Wild Inside: Why you have nothing to fear from Zoo Knoxville’s poison dart frogs

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - They pack enough poison to kill ten people, but they’re some of the cutest things you’ll ever see: Zoo Knoxville’s poison dart frogs.

One of the first questions WVLT’s Harry Sullivan had at Zoo Knoxville’s Arc was “What happens when a poison dart frog gets out of its enclosure?” Thankfully, the zoo has that covered.

“What’s really cool about these captive poison dart frogs is that they are totally harmless, and that’s because their poison comes primarily from their diet,” Zoo Knoxville’s Lexie Nelson said. “So there are alkalines in the insects that they eat in the wild, and when they metabolize those alkalines, it turns into poison. But when they’re here, obviously we don’t feed them those, so they’re totally fine.”

So, in theory, the zoo’s frogs are no more dangerous than any other frog. They still have their bright coloring, though.

“All the different colors all represent a common theme,” Nelson said. “And that theme is, ‘I’m poisonous. You don’t want to eat me, because if you eat me, you’re not going to have a good time.’”

So what do the frogs get to eat? Fruit flies!

“I like to be very generous with the amount of fruit flies that I get, because we have five of them and they’re quite large for dart frogs,” Nelson said. “I think their genus is one of the largest dart frogs.”

Nelson said the frogs are one of her favorite animals as well.

“I actually really love poison dart frogs. It was one of my first animals that I had growing up,” Nelson said.

The zoo doesn’t source their fruit flies either; they use their own.

“We are not sourcing any fruit flies from other places,” Nelson said. “We get them here. We essentially are recreating the same fruit fly culture over and over again. So I think that’s really great from a sustainability standpoint.”

You can see Zoo Knoxville’s poison dart frogs at the Arc, where many other reptiles live.

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