This frog carries enough venom to kill 10 adults in less than three minutes

The dart frog, found in the small rainforests of Colombia’s Pacific coast, is just a couple of inches long and looks colourful and harmless.

Alas, all is not as it seems, and far from turning into a handsome prince, the dart frog turns into the most- poisonous creature on Earth.

Each one of these tiny monsters carries enough venom to kill 10 adults in less than three minutes.

He got his name not because he darts around in a flash, but after the native Embera hunters, who used to catch these frogs and use their venom to make themselves lethal blowgun darts.

They can also come in a variety of oranges or even pale green, so if you are pottering around near Colombia’s Pacific coast, just be wary of every and any frog, to be on the safe side!

The experts, in fact, believe that the brighter their colour, the more toxic their venom, although scientists aren’t sure why this is the case.

Just coming into contact with a dart frog would not be enough to kill you, as they only secrete their poison through their skin if they feel threatened.

Pick one up for more than a few seconds, however, and you are virtually committing suicide.

Within seconds, the frog’s skin becomes covered in alkaloid poison, or batrachotoxin, and the human holding it will go through uncontrollable muscle contractions and, before long, heart failure.

The boffins have traced the frog’s extreme toxicity back 40 million years or more, to the forest of Northern South America, and amazingly found that their ancestors were not poisonous.

It’s thought that perhaps dart frogs down the centuries have ingested vast amounts of plant poisons, via their prey, such as flies, toxic beetles, crickets and the like.

Because they have a high metabolism rate, they processed all this poison fast, which led to them being able to withstand it, unlike the rest of us.

Interestingly, if dart frogs are raised in captivity, they don’t develop such strong poison, so that seems to back up this theory.

They are becoming an endangered species now, due to so much deforestation in their areas, with illegal gold mining, cocoa cultivation and logging deemed more important than preserving the last rainforests.

World Land Trust, an international conservation charity, has set up a reserve in the rainforests to try to protect the species before it dies out.

How to Get Wildlife Into Your Garden – And Keep It There