Warning Signs
The rather fierce countenance of a Strawberry poison-dart frog, also referred to in English as a Blue jeans poison-dart frog (Oophaga pumilio), surveys the litter of the forest floor to determine its next move, Monteverde cloud forest, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica.
I have always wanted to see a poison-dart frog in the wild. As a child growing up amongst Oregon’s damp woods, I sometimes found Pacific tree frogs (Pseudacris regilla) and Northern alligator lizards (Elgaria coerulea) and brought them home to live with me for awhile in a terrarium in my room. I would catch flies for the frogs to eat, and I marveled at their bright green skin and the semi-translucent throat pouches of the males. When I read about poison-dart frogs and saw them in the local pet shop, their outlandish coloring seemed perfectly unreal. A creature that could only exist in some fantastical forest.
Tropical cloud forest is indeed that fantastical forest. Life is everywhere, much of it well-concealed up amongst the leaves and branches of the multi-layered canopy overhead. But not these frogs. They move purposefully about the forest floor looking for prey, and I learned that it is toxins produced by mites they consume that bioaccumulate and ward off any potential would-be predators. This type of bold coloring is referred to as aposematic coloration, and it is thought that the bright hues serve as an honest indicator of the frog’s toxicity and poor suitability when it comes to a tasty meal. The O. pumilio species is an interesting one in that it displays 15-30 different color morphs, a number of which are true-breeding according to Wikipedia.
Technical notes: Adobe’s Lightroom now has an AI-driven denoise feature that was transformational for this image. I shot this at ISO 14,400 due to the low light under the forest canopy, and because I wanted to maintain a small aperture to make sure I got the entire frog in focus. I am impressed that the result doesn’t look like an ISO anywhere near that high, at least to me.
Warning Signs
The rather fierce countenance of a Strawberry poison-dart frog, also referred to in English as a Blue jeans poison-dart frog (Oophaga pumilio), surveys the litter of the forest floor to determine its next move, Monteverde cloud forest, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica.
I have always wanted to see a poison-dart frog in the wild. As a child growing up amongst Oregon’s damp woods, I sometimes found Pacific tree frogs (Pseudacris regilla) and Northern alligator lizards (Elgaria coerulea) and brought them home to live with me for awhile in a terrarium in my room. I would catch flies for the frogs to eat, and I marveled at their bright green skin and the semi-translucent throat pouches of the males. When I read about poison-dart frogs and saw them in the local pet shop, their outlandish coloring seemed perfectly unreal. A creature that could only exist in some fantastical forest.
Tropical cloud forest is indeed that fantastical forest. Life is everywhere, much of it well-concealed up amongst the leaves and branches of the multi-layered canopy overhead. But not these frogs. They move purposefully about the forest floor looking for prey, and I learned that it is toxins produced by mites they consume that bioaccumulate and ward off any potential would-be predators. This type of bold coloring is referred to as aposematic coloration, and it is thought that the bright hues serve as an honest indicator of the frog’s toxicity and poor suitability when it comes to a tasty meal. The O. pumilio species is an interesting one in that it displays 15-30 different color morphs, a number of which are true-breeding according to Wikipedia.
Technical notes: Adobe’s Lightroom now has an AI-driven denoise feature that was transformational for this image. I shot this at ISO 14,400 due to the low light under the forest canopy, and because I wanted to maintain a small aperture to make sure I got the entire frog in focus. I am impressed that the result doesn’t look like an ISO anywhere near that high, at least to me.