They are -totally- adorable! I would love hearing them in the middle of the day: for no apparent reason, Green Racer (my name for my Ameerega trivittata, aka three-stripe dart frog) would start to pi-pi-pi-pi on and off for a while. Sweet!
Handling them is a problem for a different reason than most people think: their skin is sensitive to oils on the human hand and they can suffer from too much handling. Domesticated dart frogs are non-poisonous. (<--surprise, eh?) They get their venom in the wild from the bugs they eat. Without those bugs they're about as poisonous as your basic tree frog.
Do your research: if you decide to get some, talk to an owner or read books because the species vary widely in temperament and behavior. Some are pretty aggressive and should not be mixed with other species; others are very gregarious and you can have a nice mix (I had bumblebee and three-stripe frogs because they get along and they both make pleasant sounds). Some are silent or make weird noises while others (like the three-stripe) make adorable sounds. Some are easy to breed (Tracy's Azureus were somewhat aggressive, but bred like crazy) while others are trickier. Oh, and get males: they make the noise!
You can actually have a dart frog vivarium that can sit on your desk (like one of those hexagonal plexiglass 2gallon tanks). If you get a species that is on the large side, you can feed them small crickets instead of the harder to find pinheads (which are just very young crickets). Fruit flies can be fed instead of pinheads, but they tend to crawl out of the tanks and make a nuisance of themselves.
Man, now I want to get another dart frog! And a -small- vivarium, easily transportable.
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Date: 2011-11-07 09:04 pm (UTC)Handling them is a problem for a different reason than most people think: their skin is sensitive to oils on the human hand and they can suffer from too much handling. Domesticated dart frogs are non-poisonous. (<--surprise, eh?) They get their venom in the wild from the bugs they eat. Without those bugs they're about as poisonous as your basic tree frog.
Do your research: if you decide to get some, talk to an owner or read books because the species vary widely in temperament and behavior. Some are pretty aggressive and should not be mixed with other species; others are very gregarious and you can have a nice mix (I had bumblebee and three-stripe frogs because they get along and they both make pleasant sounds). Some are silent or make weird noises while others (like the three-stripe) make adorable sounds. Some are easy to breed (Tracy's Azureus were somewhat aggressive, but bred like crazy) while others are trickier. Oh, and get males: they make the noise!
You can actually have a dart frog vivarium that can sit on your desk (like one of those hexagonal plexiglass 2gallon tanks). If you get a species that is on the large side, you can feed them small crickets instead of the harder to find pinheads (which are just very young crickets). Fruit flies can be fed instead of pinheads, but they tend to crawl out of the tanks and make a nuisance of themselves.
Man, now I want to get another dart frog! And a -small- vivarium, easily transportable.