They're better able to extract oxygen from each breath and transport it to their muscles, just like well-trained athletes," study author Juan Santos of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North Carolina said in a statement.
The researchers testedof frogs from Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama, making the creatures walk in a plastic tube that rotated like a hamster wheel. After four minutes, the researchers estimated each frog's metabolic rate to figure out the animal's aerobic fitness.
Drab frogs may be less fit than theirbecause of their life habits, said study researcher David Cannatella of the University of Texas, Austin. Poison dart frogs get the ingredients to make their toxins by eating certain ants and mites, Cannatella said in a statement. That means they have to range far and wide to find food, which could explain their athletic skills.
"Nontoxic species basically stay in one place and don't move very much and eat any insect that comes close to them," Santos said. "But the bright, poisonous frogs are very picky about what they eat."
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