This is the point where I cannot believe in the nonsense of Intelligent Design.

Seriously – what super-natural drugs are out there for some all-high deity to think HOT PINK with blue legs is a great colour for a frog?!?

Now don’t get me wrong. I understand that not ALL colouring is supposed to be perfectly matched to the environment. And we ARE talking about Poison Dart Frogs here. They have a built in defence mechanism that I am attempting to graft to my current test-subjects minions. At least with evolution, we can theorise that these ‘party-goers’ have survived over the millenium because most of the other smart wildlife has figured out pretty colours = bad mojo.

But otherwise… These are the frogs that Intelligent Design licked.

“Oooh. You taste like Strawberry Sundaes. Let’s make you HOT PINK!!”

Purdy. And poisonous. Highly. Tribes in South America used to dip their arrows and darts into these frogs, and others like them. Apparently, the brighter the colouring, the higher the toxicity. I wonder if that applies to the night-club scene as well…

Unfortunately, all my testing shows the poison is not just from the frogs. In fact, I have to hunt them directly from the wild. Yep – it comes from the food they eat. The ants, the bugs, the plants. All that stuff. Breeding these guys in my lab is simply not going to cut it. The best result I could hope for would be putting EG Dad to sleep – and I’m not so sure if it would be the dart or the movie I made him watch (Of course the Devil Wears Prada – because she can’t get her hands on my Converse Batman sneakers).

Additional problem: damn things are critically endangered. No, not because we keep trying to collect the shiny. More like, we are terrified of the buggers and keep cutting down their jungle. So not only do I have to haul my arse through the Amazon, but I have to keep my eyes peeled for dwindling numbers. At least they are brightly coloured to help me find them – all 2cm of them.

Of course, there is one way to find out how these frogs fit in Intelligent Design. In fact, I would love to see the look on the pastor’s face, when Sinister takes a Poison-Dart Frog to school for (non-)Scripture.

Methinks there might be some frog-lickin’ theories on that one.

Categories: Taking Over the World

Tagged as: Amazon biology critically endangered evolution frogs intelligent design pink poison science wildlife

Evil Genius Mum

Evil Genius Mum
- Taking over the world, one blog post at a time