Question: Hi Beth!!! where is your blue frog from and where dose he sleep and live, he is very pretty an I love hi name!!!

Beth Macaulay answered on 3 Mar 2021:

Hi Elsie! Thanks for asking about him – he is very flattered 🙂

Meelo is a blue poison dart frog (scientific name: Dendrobates Tinctorius Azureus). He is originally from the rainforest in South America, in a country called Suriname. But Meelo is captive bred, meaning he was born in a pet shop in Ireland and has never actually seen Suriname.

I keep him in a type of tank called a “Vivarium”, and I try to make it as much like the real rainforest as possible. The environment in his tank is “bioactive”, which means that it cleans and takes care of itself, just like a natural section of rainforest. I have real plants in there that would be found in the rainforest and I have tiny little bugs in there called Springtails which clean up Meelo’s poo and keep the plants healthy. I have to keep it humid and warm in there for him, so I have a heater and I spray his tank with water every day. The ground in there is covered with soil, moss, and fallen leaves, which he loves to hide under! He also has a little bath that he likes to dip into and get moist and clean himself off in (sometimes he poos in there too)

Meelo is not a shy guy, he likes to hop around his vivarium and explore and look for little bugs to eat. Sometimes he does hide though, and he usually likes to sleep snuggled under a leaf or a log or between two leaves in one if his plants.

He’s also a very fussy frog. If the light is too bright or the temperature a little too cold, then he will stay in bed all day, only getting out to eat. Which makes me think we are really similar and actually perfect for each other.

When poison dart frogs are in the wild, they eat a lot poisonous bugs. The chemicals in these bugs make the frog ooze out this poisonous substance on their skin. It is thought that Native Southern American Tribes used to touch the point of their arrows (or “darts”) gently against the frogs’ skin to get some poison on it, then shoot the poison arrows at their enemies – which is how they got the name “poison dart frogs”. Some species of these frogs are so poisonous that they could kill up to 20 men!!! The poisonous chemical has also been studied as a possible medicine or painkiller.
Meelo is not poisonous because he doesn’t eat any of those insects from the rainforest – I only feed him fruit flies. But I am actually toxic to him! Because he absorbs everything through his skin, he would absorb all the oils and salts and dirt that is on my hands and it would make him sick, so I’m not able to hold him 🙁 (except briefly with gloves on)

Also – I am not even entirely sure Meelo is a boy. The female dart frogs are bigger than the males, but I can’t tell if he is smaller than a female because I don’t have a known female dart frog that I can compare him to! Meelo is only about 3-4 cm big. I hope to get him a little friend someday.

Below is a pretty good video that can tell you more about them 🙂