Days after European leaders accused Russia of using a ‘rare poison’ to ‘poison’ jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, South American dart frog experts said on Monday that the particular poison was likely a lab-produced replica rather than wild-sourced.
Alexei Navalny died in February 2024 while serving a 19-year sentence for “extremism” in an Arctic prison colony, a charge he and his supporters say was punishment for his opposition work. (AFP)The neurotoxin epibatidine is believed to be carried by several species of South American dart frogs in the forests of Ecuador and Peru, news agency AFP reported.
The foreign ministries of the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands have alleged that Russia poisoned the opposition leader and a staunch critic of President Vladimir Putin with a rare and deadly poison found in the skin of a poisonous dart frog.
Alexei Navalny died in February 2024 while serving a 19-year sentence for “extremism” in an Arctic prison colony, a charge he and his supporters say was punishment for his opposition work.
What is the neurotoxin epibatidine?The neurotoxin epibatidine, which is carried in the skin of several South American dart frogs, is a highly toxic compound. According to a report in The Guardian, it was first isolated from poison dart frogs of the genus Epipedobates native to northern South America – frogs that do not occur naturally in Russia.
In an interview with BBC Russian, toxicology expert Jill Johnson said that this “extremely rare neurotoxin” is only found in small amounts in one wild frog species and that frogs acquire the toxin through their diet, as captive-bred frogs do not contain epibatidine.
Availability of lethal toxinsSpeaking about the availability of dart frogs for toxin collection, Andrea Terran, a member of the Jambatu Center for Amphibian Research and Conservation in Ecuador, said that it is quite easy to find them in the market because the amphibians are exported or trafficked in large quantities every year.
More than 800 of the suspected species, Epipedobates anthonyi, also known as Anthony’s poison arrow frog, have been legally exported from Ecuador in the past ten years, AFP reported, citing data from CITES permits.
In Navalny’s death, experts said the toxin was more likely to be a synthetic copy rather than the real thing.
“It’s easy to buy the toxin or get it from the lab that made it,” Terran said.
Impossible to source from the wildIvan Lozano, director of the Zambatu Center for Amphibian Research and Conservation, said it was “unlikely” that “a large number of frogs” — each about two to three centimeters long, would be needed to produce a lethal dose for a human.
Only a “synthetic version” made in a laboratory could kill a person, he said.
