Lifestyles of the bright and toxic overlap
By Susan Milius
They’re bright, beautiful, and dangerous to eat. But until now, no one has known about the home lives of Madagascar’s toxic frogs. Now, a researcher has observed these domestic dramas in the wild.
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The behavior of the frogs–in the Mantella genus–appears strangely familiar, reports Heather Heying of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her observations reveal a pattern of social and sexual habits rarely seen in frogs, that is, except among poison-dart frogs on the other side of the globe. Yet the poison frogs of Madagascar and the Americas don’t seem closely related, Heying says.