Why should we care about amphibians?
Amphibians have an important role in the ecosystem. They are excellent predators, eating many of the insects which bother other animals and humans, too. They eat garden pests and insects that cause disease. At the same time, however, they are an important prey item for other animals. People even eat them.
They are also very important to humans because of what is inside them and on them. They are used a lot in classrooms to teach students about basic anatomy. If you are interested in seeing what a frog looks like on the inside, you can dissect them online and you don’t even have to kill a frog!
The Choco Indians knew that some frogs had powerful poisons on their skin and used this to poison their arrows to make them more deadly. Other frogs they used to spread on their skin when they cut themselves because it made the wound heal faster. A long time ago, Chinese people used a medicine made from frog poisons to help the heart that works the same way our modern medicine does to strengthen heart contractions.
It is funny that in all these places thought of as “traditional” people recognized the value of frogs. In the West, however, frogs were blamed for things like warts and witchcraft. Maybe it was the West that was backwards because now scientists are finding many powerful medicines in frogs. Here are some uses of frogs in medicine:
- African clawed frogs were used to show if a woman was pregnant back in the 1930s.
- A type of Australian tree frog may be used to make more powerful antibiotics that bacteria will have a hard time building a resistance to.
- A pain killer that is more powerful than morphine but with less side effects can be made from the toxins made by the South American poison dart frog.
- They may even be able to make a mosquito repellent from frog secretions that does not have the chemicals in our current sprays!
Amphibians really are amazing and very important to humans as well as the environment.
