How to Color a Frog: the Boh-Art Way

It was so delightful seeing children and adults alike coloring during a family arts-and-crafts activity at the recent Bohart Museum of Entomology open house.

What did they color? Drawings of poison dart frogs (Dendrobates tinctorius).

We earlier blogged about the lab of neurobiologist-animal behaviorist Eva Fischer interacting with the crowd. It was the first time that vertebrates took center stage "in the House of the Invertebrates." The Bohart Museum houses a global collection of invertebrates--eight million insect specimens.

The poison dart frogs were there because they eat insects. It's their diet of spicy ants and other tropical insects that renders them toxic. In the lab, in captivity, they are non-toxic. (They eat fruit flies.)

But back to coloring..

What's not to like about coloring? It's fun and creative. You get to choose your own crayons and you don't have to stay within the lines if you don't want to. You want your frog primarily black? Go for it. Red stripes? Great idea. A dash of yellow? By all means. 

For adults, coloring calms the mind,  soothes the soul, and cracks open the artistic sense. (No wonder the market for adult coloring books is growing.)

All in all, the open house was a great day for the scientists, for the live poison dart frogs, and for the new species of multicolored frogs that leaped from the coloring pages.

And the artists? Color them happy. 

The Bohart Museum, part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane. It is directed by Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in the Department of Entomology and associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.