Scientists discover venomous frogs

Venomous frogs are a thing now, apparently.

While poisonous frogs are quite common, venomous frogs were unrecognized by science until just now.

Venom and poison might get used interchangeably, but there’s one major difference: Poison is absorbed through the skin or eaten. Venom is injected. Pufferfish are poisonous, vipers are venomous.

So yeah, there aren’t just poisonous frogs out there that secrete toxins from special glands. There are frogs that inject venom into things.

Sweet dreams, everyone.

The two (!) venomous frog species from Brazil are described in a study published last week in Current Biology. Corythomantis greeningi and Aparasphenodon brunoi aren’t newly discovered species, but until now they’ve been going incognito vis-à-vis the whole venom injection thing.

Their means of injection are bony spines on their heads, which were discovered when Carlos Jared of Instituto Butantan in São Paulo got stuck with one.

It turns out Jared was quite lucky: He got the venom of C. greeningi, which is actually much less potent than the other frog being studied. A. brunoi could kill 80 humans with a single gram of its venom.

Not to worry, though: A gram of toxin sounds like a tiny amount, but it’s way more than a human would be exposed to during one prick of a frog’s spine.