Golden Poison Dart Frog

[guppiecat]

One interesting thing about captive breeding is that your captive population is often based on the genetics of the initial individuals collected … often decades ago.

The golden poison dart frog is green (according to the zookeeper I talked to) because, in the wild, there are green ones and there are gold ones. Apparently, the green ones were easier to capture, so most of the ones you see in zoos are green.

This has started to change, as more frogs are being captured to help protect them against the chytrid fungus, so the genetic diversity of the captive population has increased.

Originally posted at stories.starmind.org.