dart frogs

Take a leap with a dart frog pet

Monday, September 26, 2005

By Nick Thomas

The Grand Rapids Press

When Cathy Weirts met her future husband, Bill, he had a few dart frogs. She remembers thinking they were pretty.

She quickly became enchanted by the colors and markings on the little frogs, and encouraged her soon-to-be husband to get more.

"It was really addictive," she said. "Every time I saw a new one, I had to have it."

She's not the only one to fall for the frogs.

Their popularity has grown so much Cathy and her husband quit their day jobs to breed and raise dart frogs full time. Today, the Wyoming couple sells frogs to other breeders across the country through their online store, www.qualityexotics.com, and locally through V.I.Pets in Grand Rapids.

Lifelong animal lover

Bill Weirts is considered one of the country's experts in captive breeding programs for these amazing animals. The Weirts' Wyoming garage houses one of the largest private collections in the country. Step inside, and you're surrounded by 130 glass tanks holding more than 200 of the most beautiful frogs on the planet.

A myriad of receptacles hold a thousand or more eggs, tadpoles and froglets in various stages of development. Other containers hold crickets and wingless fruit flies the devoted frog breeder raises to feed the colorful amphibians.

Weirts, 49, became interested in reptiles and amphibians from books as a child.

"I've been fascinated by animals ever since I could walk," said Weirts, who grew up in a suburb of Detroit.

And walk he did -- to his favorite playground, a vacant 4-acre wooded area containing a small swamp just across the street from his house.

"My mother couldn't keep me out of it," he admitted, saying he often returned home dripping wet with a handful of snakes.

Summers with his grandparents in Florida also were memorable.

"My grandmother's maid would refuse to come into my room when I was staying there," he says. "I always had tanks full of lizards and snakes." After leaving the army in 1978, Weirts worked for three years as a bird and reptile keeper at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, in Colorado Springs, Colo. He opened a business, Rocky Mountain Zoological Supply, supplying reptiles to pet stores, and worked a spell at the Detroit Zoo before moving to Grand Rapids in 1990 to become a 7-11 corporate manager.

Popular creatures

Bill Weirt's interest in dart frogs began a decade ago, just as captive breeding was becoming popular. His first such frogs were a pair of blue azureus he purchased for $150 a piece. "They were definitely an eye catcher," he says.

Ah, back to the frogs' eye-catching colors. It just keeps hopping up.

"Dart frogs always attract the attention of visitors and are one of our most popular exhibits," says Bill Flanagan, associate curator of the National Amphibian Conservation Center at the Detroit Zoo. "Many frogs are nocturnal, but dart frogs are active during the day and are very visible in our displays."

The curators at John Ball Zoo also have been awed by these jewels of nature. After one look at the black and yellow Bumble Dart Frog of Weirts, they said, "Wow, that's what we want," he recalls.

It's a pet that is growing in popularity, says Weirts, who gets daily e-mails from people in Taiwan, Japan, China and other countries seeking dart frogs -- so many that he can't keep up with the requests.

"Nobody's producing enough to meet the market right now," Weirts said. He is so busy breeding and feeding what he does produce, he hasn't updated his Web site in ages and, among the 200 frogs he has on-hand, only about 15 of the 45 species he sells are represented.

Weirts and his wife travel to reptile shows every weekend, including a popular Chicago event held twice a month. The dart frogs they sell average about $50 a piece, with his most expensive ones being worth $300 to $500.

The dart frogs are popular with the college crowd, since they can be kept in a small space -- not to mention they make a great conversation piece.

The frogs derive their name from the Ember?hoc??ibe in Columbia, who rub their hunting blowgun darts with a deadly toxin secreted from the frogs' skin. The Golden Poison Dart Frog of Columbia is the most toxic and contains enough poison to kill 10 adult humans, making it one of the most lethal animals known.

Most species of dart frog are not lethal. None of those raised in captivity, like the Weirts' are, are lethal, as they are fed fruit flies and crickets and do not develop the toxins found in the wild frogs' diet. When a frog is ordered, it's packed in a clear plastic cup, and usually shipped overnight in a styrofoam lined, insulated box with a little wet moss. Weirts also checks online to see what the temperature is where he is sending the frog to determine whether he puts a heat pack or cold pack in the box.

"If it's too cold, we won't ship," says Weirts, who has only had one frog not make it to its destination in the past four years.

Future lifesavers

"Ten years ago, little was known about the breeding biology of these frogs," said Jerry Urquhart, assistant professor in the biology department at Michigan State University. "The techniques that breeders like Bill Weirts and others develop may someday be crucial to saving endangered dart frogs."

Biologists studying wild dart frogs say most of the more than 100 species are not endangered. But Urquhart cautions that a few are, due to poaching, disease and loss of habitat.

Urquhart believes the hobby of raising dart frogs is a great way for people to learn about nature and environmental issues.

"You create a miniature rainforest for them to live in," he said. "You can see their entire life cycle and watch the miraculous transformation that occurs during metamorphosis."

Bill and Cathy Weirts couldn't agree more.

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