Blowgun dart

Frog poison. Batrachotoxin (BTX) is a steroidal alkaloid from the skin of Phyllobates terribilis, a poisonous Colombian frog (source of the poison used on blowgun darts). In the presence of BTX, sodium channels in an excised patch stay persistently open when the membrane is depolarized. They close when the membrane is repolarized. Which transition is blocked by BTX ... 

Fig. 3.46 A South American indigenous man using blowgun dart dipped in curare. (Copyright-free Wikipedia picture)...

A poison, used by tribes further inland and mostly put on blowgun darts, that seems to have caused some kind of paralysis. 

The darts are probably the single most important part of a blowgun system. They may be made of wire or wood, with bases made from paper cones, plastic... 

The blowgun and dart specs shown In Fig.One are based on the "Aeromag Blowgun J The gun complete with six darts is available for about 15. Additional darts are available for around 3.75/per set of 6. 

Myers CW, Daly J W, and Malkin B (1978) A dangerously toxic new frog (Phyllobates) used by Embera Indians of Western Columbia, with discussion of blowgun fabrication and dart poisoning. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 161 307-366. 

Many indigenous groups in the South American rain forests of the Amzon basin use blowguns with blowpipe darts poisoned at the tip to paralyze hunted game. The poisonous material is known as curare (which means poison in several local languages). There are three kinds of curare which are named by the difference in the containers used to carry them these are (1) tubo curare (tube of bamboo curare), (2) pot curare, and (3) calabash curare, and are described below. 

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