Amphibia · Anura
Dendrobates tinctoriusCuvier, 1797
Tinging Frog
Photograph by H. Zell, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A day-active frog reaching 50 mm snout to vent.
Also called Dyeing Poison Frog, Dyeing Poison-arrow Frog.
Amphibia › Anura › Dendrobatidae › Dendrobates
- Grows to
- 50mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 11years
- Lives
- Aquatic, arboreal, terrestrial
Longer than 99% of all species in Dendrobatidae anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 13.4 to 50 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
17 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Population trend
- Stable
as reported by the IUCN Red List
The animal itself
- Longest recorded life
- 11years
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 50mm2 in
snout-to-vent length, as this source reports for Anura
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Yes
- Eats vertebrates
- Unknown
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Aquatic, arboreal, terrestrial
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- How the young develop
- Through a larval stage
- Average clutch
- 9
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–16eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
midpoint of the reported range — Oliveira, São-Pedro, Santos-Barrera, Penone, and Costa, 2017, Sci. Data, 4:170123
Naming and history
- Described by
- Cuvier
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1797
Keeping one
- Land
- 125 × 75cm
- Water, at least 5 cm deep
- 10 × 10cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 125 cm tall on average.
The standard gives 25 × 15 body lengths of land and 2 × 2 of water, for two animals.
For each further animal the standard asks for another 10 × 10 cm of land and 75 × 10 cm of water.
Swiss Tierschutzverordnung (TSchV), SR 455.1, Anhang 2, Tabelle 6 — legally binding minimum enclosure sizes for amphibians, given as multiples of total body length and stated for two animals.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length, which for a frog is its body length of 2 in (50 mm) — how this is worked out.
Tinging Frog
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 1 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Populationbreeder consensus
The population an animal's ancestors came from, and what frogs from there look like — the blue of an Azureus, the yellow and black of a Citronella, the size and pattern that go with each place.
Worth knowing. In dart frogs the word "morph" means a population rather than a gene, so it does not combine with another morph and no pairing gives a ratio. Keepers hold that morphs should never be crossed: the offspring belong to no population, cannot honestly be sold as either parent, and captive dart frogs stand in for wild ones that are declining, so the lineages are the whole point of keeping them.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Still living
- — Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · greatest
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Diet
- — How it hunts
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Venomous
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Limbs
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Red List criteria
- — Region
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Suborder
- — Infraorder
- — Subspecies
- — Type locality
- — Habitat
- — Active in
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Dendrobatidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Dendrobates tinctorius. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/dendrobates-tinctorius
@misc{dendrobates_tinctorius_2026,
title = {Dendrobates tinctorius},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/dendrobates-tinctorius}
}Sources
- Oliveira, B.F. et al. (2017). AmphiBIO, a global database for amphibian ecological traits. Scientific Data 4:170123. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.