Amphibia · Anura
Ranitomeya imitatorSchulte, 1986
Mimic Poison Frog
Photograph by Matthew Runo, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A day-active frog reaching 18 mm snout to vent.
Also called Imitating Poison Frog.
Once published as Ranitomeya intermedia — those names reach this page.
Amphibia › Anura › Dendrobatidae › Ranitomeya
- Grows to
- 18.2mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 15years
- Lives
- Arboreal, terrestrial
Longer than only 13% 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
18 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
- 15years
Spelman, 2012. Animal encyclopedia, National Geographic Society, National Geographic Books, 304 p.
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 18.2mm0.7 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
- 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
- 2.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–4eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 2per year
- Mature at
- 0.5–0.75years
midpoint of the reported range — Oliveira, São-Pedro, Santos-Barrera, Penone, and Costa, 2017, Sci. Data, 4:170123
Naming and history
- Described by
- Schulte
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1986
Keeping one
- Land
- 46 × 27cm
- Water, at least 2 cm deep
- 4 × 4cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 46 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 4 × 4 cm of land and 27 × 4 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 0.7 in (18.2 mm) — how this is worked out.
Mimic Poison Frog
Morphs
1 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 0 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Skin colourpeer reviewed
- A histological analysis of coloration in the Peruvian mimic poison frog (Ranitomeya imitator). — PeerJ 2023
- The genomics of mimicry: Gene expression throughout development provides insights into convergent and divergent phenotypes in a Müllerian mimicry system. — Mol Ecol 2024
- What makes a mimic? Orange, red, and black color production in the mimic poison frog (Ranitomeya imitator). — Genome Biol Evol 2024
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
- — 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). Ranitomeya imitator. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ranitomeya-imitator
@misc{ranitomeya_imitator_2026,
title = {Ranitomeya imitator},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ranitomeya-imitator}
}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.