Although the poison is in the mucus that the frogs secrete onto their skins, human skin can’t pass the poison into the bloodstream through touch alone.
However, if the person has cuts or abrasions or accidentally rubs his mouth or nose after touching a frog, he might become ill or die.
Some of these frogs are so lethal, with enough poison in one frog to kill eight humans, that many South American hunters would rather not run the risk of accidental ingestion.
When extracting poison, they will often simply skewer the frog into the ground with a stick while they coat their sharp darts with its sticky slime.
For slightly less poisonous frogs, they capture them, skewer them, and roast them over a fire, collecting the drippings to use on their darts. What’s even more dangerous than the actual collection of the poison is toting the darts on a hunt.
If the sharp end of a dart accidentally goes into a man’s skin, that’s pretty much the end of the hunt for him. Happy trails, amigo!
Life’s Rough.
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