Salamanders are amphibians that belong to the suborder salamanders, order caudate. They are clumsy in appearance, their body is disproportionately thick with transverse folds and a rounded tail. There are many glands located on the skin. Most of them are concentrated on the sides of the body, on the back and behind the ears. The front limbs have 4 fingers, and the hind limbs have 5. A very interesting and very mysterious creature is a salamander.

The animal is the hero of numerous legends and even fairy tales, and all thanks to the belief that the amphibian does not burn in fire. Of course, you should not mock the salamander in order to be convinced of the veracity of these words, but if it so happens that the animal falls into the fire, it will not die, but, most likely, will escape. The salamander lizard has mucus that comes out of its skin. It is this that helps to avoid the negative consequences of fire. By the way, because of its milky white secretions, this creature was considered deadly to humans for many years.

The most common and famous is the fire salamander. The animal received this name because of its golden-orange spots on a black background; sometimes it is also called spotted. amphibian - Europe, except for the northern territory, Wet and dark places - this is what the salamander loves so much. prefers to hide under stones, tree roots, and in burrows. The lizard feels great in forests where there is high humidity. If hot weather persists for a long period and the required amount of precipitation does not fall, then the habitation of the salamander in this place is in question, since the amphibian cannot long time exist at high temperatures and low humidity.

The main disadvantage of the animal is its slowness. Because of this, they cannot diversify their diet and feed mainly on snails, clumsy insects, and earthworms. Sometimes they attack small vertebrates. Slowness is also the reason why the salamander becomes the victim of many predators. The animal can become dinner for a shrew, raccoon, opossum, and owl. Typically, lizard mucus has no effect on predators; it is harmless to them.

The salamander belongs to the type of viviparous animals; the young look like tadpoles, like those of frogs. From the moment of birth until autumn, they stay in the water, and when it gets cold, they come to land to hide more reliably. During the winter, all lizards hibernate. For a long time, people believed that the caustic mucus secreted by the salamander through its skin was deadly not only for small rodents, but also for large animals and humans. In fact, the venom of some species does cause harm, but fatal outcome he doesn't give.

A salamander never attacks a person. A photo of this lizard shows that it has no attack devices. The amphibian does not have claws, teeth, or spines, so to protect yourself from poison, you simply should not touch it. With prolonged contact with the salamander, mucus can enter the body even through the skin. The poison can affect the brain and central nervous system, so you should follow safety precautions when meeting a lizard.

Family of true salamanders

IN Lately tailed amphibians were divided into several families. The first of them, true salamanders, includes most of the tailed reptiles, although not the most unique ones. different types. Salamanders are distinguished by the following characteristics: their body structure is similar to lizards, their body is slender, rarely clumsy, their head is large, wide, more or less flat, their muzzle is short and blunt. In adults, gills are never visible*; the eyes are relatively large, strongly convex, with well-developed, closing eyelids; the nostrils are small and located at the end of the muzzle; The ears are never noticeable from the outside.

* Among salamanders, species are now known that have neotenic larvae with gills (otherwise, their appearance almost corresponds to the adult organism).

The neck of salamanders is clearly separated from the head and a deep fold of skin is always noticeable near the throat; their body is elongated, spindle-shaped or cylindrical; two pairs of limbs are rather weak, the front ones always have 4, and the hind ones most often have 5 and only as an exception 4 fingers; the fingers are sometimes long, sometimes short, most often they are free, and less often they are connected by swimming membranes; Most species do not have claws; the tail, as a rule, is longer than the body, almost always compressed laterally and either rounded or lanceolate at the end; A round tail is less common. The mucous outer skin is covered with many glands and warts and is therefore soft and uneven; however, in many species the skin appears smooth to the naked eye. On the sides of the back of the head, a large accumulation of glands is often noticed, which are similar to the so-called ear glands of toads and bear the same name. There are teeth on both jaws, and in addition, small teeth are located on the posterior edge of the palatine bones, on the vomer, and on the parasphenoid bones, and their location is different: they either sit on the inner edge of two long, posteriorly diverging processes of the palatine bone and are therefore elongated in length, or occupy the rear edge of a straight or obliquely cut opener and in this case form transverse rows. The tongue is round or ovoid, in some species it is attached with the entire lower surface or a narrow middle strip to the bottom of the oral cavity and therefore is free only at the edges; in other species it is attached only in the middle by a stalk, therefore, it looks like a mushroom, its edges are free, and it is very mobile.
In the family of true salamanders, the palatine teeth are located in two posteriorly diverging longitudinal rows, which sit on the inner edge of the two long processes of the palatine bone; there are no teeth on the parasphenoid bone; the vertebrae have notches on the back side. Nowadays, 6 genera and 27 species of salamanders are known*, most of which live in the north of the Old World, as well as in North America, and in Asia they extend to tropical India and southern China.

* Now there are 57 species from 15 genera.

"The salamander is an animal that looks like a lizard and has spots that look like stars; it appears only during heavy rain, and in dry weather it is never visible. It is so cold that touching it, like ice, extinguishes a fire. Mucus, which looks like milk and flows out of her mouth, destroys hair on the human body; the place on the skin smeared with it loses its natural color and a stain remains there. Among all poisonous animals, the salamander is the most harmful. Other animals injure only individual people and do not kill many at a time, In addition, animals that wound a person always die and can no longer live on earth, while a salamander, on the contrary, can destroy an entire nation, unless people are careful. When it climbs a tree, it poisons all the fruits, and whoever eats them , - dies as if from severe cold; even if she touches the board on which the dough is kneaded with her paw, the bread baked from this dough is poisoned; if she falls into a well, the water becomes poisonous. However, some animals devour this poisonous creature , for example, pigs, and probably the meat of those animals that eat them, can serve as an antidote to the venom of salamanders. If what the magicians say were true, i.e. that it is the only animal that extinguishes fire, and that even some parts of its body serve good remedy against fires, then Rome would have carried out a similar experiment long ago. Sextius says that if you gut a salamander, cut off its legs and head, and keep the rest in honey, then this food serves as an aphrodisiac, but he denies the assumption that the salamander extinguishes fire." This is what Pliny writes about the salamander, and to this day many believe in the justice of all of the above, and only a minority doubt the justice of these facts. The salamander was, and is still looked at, as a terrible and terrible animal. According to Roman laws, a person who gave part of a salamander’s body to another for food was considered a poisoner and was sentenced to death. At the end of the last century, one woman tried to poison her husband by mixing salamander meat with some food, and the husband did not feel any harm and ate the food offered with appetite. The French king Francis I chose a salamander among the fire with the inscription as his emblem : “Nutrio et extinguo” (I feed and extinguish).Medieval alchemists burned this unfortunate animal with various ridiculous ceremonies and hoped to get gold when, after a while, drops of mercury were poured onto the roasted and charred salamander; This experience was, however, considered very dangerous. During fires, the salamander was often thrown into the fire, hoping to extinguish it. Whoever dared to challenge such nonsense was answered with all kinds of rudeness and abuse. Schaeffer is angry at the reasonable doubts of some people and says: “Whoever considers these stories to be lies and fables proves that he has a short-sighted, stupid and liquid brain, and shows that he is little acquainted with the world and has had no relations with scientists and experienced people"One should not be surprised that fabulous stories about the salamander hold such a strong hold among the people: uneducated people have always had a desire to believe in supernatural forces and therefore they do not easily assimilate what has been established by experience and reasonable research. In the following description we have collected information that are already known regarding the lifestyle, habits and toxicity of the common salamander.
Fire or spotted salamander(Salamandra salamandra) may be considered a representative of the family and genus of the same name; it reaches 18-23 cm in length and, on a shiny black background, is dotted with large irregular bright golden-yellow spots, which form two more or less interrupted stripes, starting at the end of the muzzle and stretching along the sides of the body to the tip of the tail, and on the tail there are some -where they merge; In addition, separate spots are visible on the sides of the body. On the limbs there are spots on each individual part, namely on the shoulder, forearm and hand, as well as on the thigh, lower leg and foot; there are also always spots on the throat, but not always on the belly.

The characteristics of the salamander genus, according to Strauch and Boulanger, are as follows. The body is quite thick, the tail is almost round, conical, rounded at the end, without a leathery ridge and, like the body, more or less ringed, i.e. parallel folds running across the body are noticeable throughout the body. There are 4 free toes on the forelimbs and 5 on the hind limbs. The skin is covered with glands, the ear glands are large, clearly demarcated and with large openings; There are longitudinal rows of cutaneous glands along the back and sides of the body. The palatines form two rows of strongly curved "S"s that radiate at the back and together form a bell-like pattern. The anterior ends of the rows are separated from each other by a larger or smaller gap and more or less protrude in front of the anterior edge of the internal nasal openings. The large, almost ovoid tongue is attached to the bottom of the oral cavity in a rather wide strip, therefore, it is free only at the edges.
The distribution area of ​​the fire salamander extends, with the exception of Great Britain and Ireland, to the whole of western, central and southern Europe - from Portugal and Spain to Greece and Turkey; in addition, it is found in Algeria and Morocco, in northern Africa, as well as in Syria and Asia Minor. In the west and southwest there are two varieties of it, differing in size and color. Within this area of ​​distribution it is nowhere among the rare animals; in Germany, for example, the fire salamander is quite common, especially in areas convenient for it. She lives in damp, dark places, mountainous and hilly countries, in narrow valleys and dense forests and hides there under roots, stones and in the burrows of various animals *.

* Salamanders are extremely conservative in the use of their shelters and, having settled once under one tree, do not change their “home” for a number of years, leaving every night to hunt 10-30 m from it and always returning before dawn. Salamanders are able to hunt in the dark because their eyes are sensitive to low light.

During the day, she leaves her shelters only after rain, as she is a nocturnal animal. Dry heat or the action of the sun's rays robs her body of so much of the moisture it needs that she may die from it. If there is no rain for several days, then, despite the dew, the salamander’s body becomes thin and pitiful, while after the rains it becomes fat, smooth and shows all signs of health. Its movements are slow and clumsy, it crawls, twisting its body to the sides, and its swimming is also similar to walking, only the tail is the main organ of movement. Her abilities are insignificant, her external senses are poorly developed, and her understanding is insignificant. Although it is often found together with other animals of its species, it cannot be attributed to the desire for publicity, since the salamander does not care about others and, in case of hunger, the strong one will, without hesitation, eat the weaker one. Both sexes look for each other only during mating, but as soon as this matter is over, then all connection is lost, and they unite together only if they find a comfortable refuge in the same hole. Salamanders feed on slow-moving animals, mainly slugs, earthworms and beetles, and occasionally small vertebrates; sometimes a lot of food is eaten at once, but salamanders can also starve for several weeks or even months. They only eat animals that move.
We still do not have completely accurate information about the reproduction of this salamander. Mating was recently observed by Zeller and noted that it occurs like that of the crested newt. In this case, the male drags the female lying on his back from a dry place into the water. It was also noticed that the male deposits hard cone-shaped lumps containing seed into the water, and that the female then takes them into the anus. It is still strange that in other cases a female salamander, separated from a male for 6-7 months, gives birth to cubs, since it is difficult to imagine that the development of the embryos would continue for so long. Even stranger is that sometimes after the first litter, a second one appears without the participation of a male. To explain this phenomenon, it must be assumed that fertilization retains its force for a long time and that the seed also acts on those eggs that were not yet mature at all at the time of fertilization*.

* Only recently have the reproductive features of spotted salamanders been established in detail, which do not coincide with the assumptions of past researchers. Unlike most other tailed amphibians that lay eggs in water, salamanders swim poorly and can even drown; therefore, the male conducts mating displays on land. First, he tightly hugs the female with his forelimbs by the neck or front of the body and rubs his throat against her nostrils, after which he lets go. Such stimulation induces the female, raising her body, to let the male pass from below. He again embraces the female and wriggles under her, depositing a spermatophore on the ground, which she captures with the cloaca, pressing her belly to the soil after the male leaves her. Moreover, the female is able to store sperm in specific tubular recesses of the cloaca (spermatheca) for more than two years and use them as needed during the passage of the egg through the oviduct for fertilization.
It has been established experimentally that in the spotted salamander, the embryo in some cases receives food and water from the mother’s body, and also carries out gas exchange with her help. However, the embryo can use another, extremely specific, source of nutrition - unfertilized eggs or smaller embryos in the female's body. This phenomenon is called intramoral cannibalism (from French cannihale and Spanish canibal - cannibal) or siblicide (from English, sib relatives, relative and Greek lysis - decay, dissolution), i.e. "Twin Murders" Another curious feature of the spotted salamander is the ability of the female to retain eggs in the posterior part of the oviduct (the “uterus”) for some time, as a result of which already formed larvae or even completely metamorphosed individuals are born. When larvae with gills are born, the female immerses the back of her body in the water and, with wave-like muscle contractions, pushes them out into the external environment.

Land salamanders give birth to live young; Only in the cages did they notice that they were laying eggs, from which, however, tadpoles very soon hatched. This is a terrestrial animal that can be found in the water only at the time when the young need to be laid in the water, therefore in April or sometimes in May. The number of tadpoles from one litter is significant: up to 50 of them were found inside the female’s body. One female, who lived with Noll, sat down in the aquarium on a protruding stone so that the back of her body was in the water and the front in the air, and in this position she began to lay eggs at night, continuing this activity until the next day; 42 eggs were laid. Typically, salamanders lay only 8, 16, 24, and less often 30-42 at a time or soon after one another in an interval of two to five days, and the eggs are almost the same size and the same degree of development; as an exception, however, it happens, perhaps only in those animals that live in captivity, that females give birth to live young and lay eggs at the same time. A similar phenomenon was observed by Erber, and what was surprising was that the number of eggs laid was exactly equal to the number of cubs, there were 34 of them. Large eggs are laid one at a time and are so transparent that fairly developed young are clearly visible in them; Before birth, the eggs are each located separately in dilated oviducts, and they are pressed against one another, and the tadpoles in the egg are so curled that the tip of the tail is near the head. After the laid egg has become somewhat swollen due to the absorption of water, the tadpole breaks the shell with the movement of its tail and is born with four limbs; it is capable of moving in water with the same agility as the highly developed tadpoles of frogs. Females most willingly give birth to cubs in cold spring water, as if knowing in advance that the full development of their offspring requires 4-5 months and, therefore, they cannot be placed in water, which dries up in the summer. The birth of the young always occurs in underwater depressions very close to the flowing water, which is necessary for the young to be born, which is confirmed by Fischer-Siegwart’s own observations. Newborn pups are 25-26 mm in length and do not reach more than 55 mm in the form of tadpoles. If there is no water at all in the location of the female salamander, then, according to many observers, she gives birth to her young in damp moss. The tadpole has a grayish-black color with a more or less greenish tint; the upper part of the body has a metallic sheen due to many small golden spots, which greatly adorn the animal; a golden sheen subsequently appears on both the sides and the belly. Little by little, large yellow spots appear between these golden spots, the skin loses its luster, becomes less smooth and warty; then the tadpole tries to crawl out to the ground, although its gills are still partially preserved. You can often find tadpoles in the water as early as October, but usually the gills disappear already in August or early September, and the animals can then settle in the places where their parents live; They acquired a color similar to that of adults while still in the water. Fully developed animals, like frogs, appear smaller in stature than tadpoles in the last stages of their development. It is difficult to determine how long the growth of young salamanders continues; They are not found very often and therefore it is assumed that for the first two years of their life they live in very hidden places. Growing them in an aquarium is very difficult. According to Fischer-Siegwart, fully grown animals are about 20 cm long and at least 4 years old. Salamanders born in captivity, probably due to the great warmth, transform faster than in the wild, and can crawl onto land within three weeks. For hibernation, according to the observations of Fischer-Siegwart, salamanders choose relatively dry and protected from the cold rock cracks overgrown with moss; however, they are quite easy to wake up. Young animals, not yet capable of reproduction, according to Leydig, leave their winter shelters in good weather at the beginning of April, and a week later the old ones appear.
The caustic juice secreted by the cutaneous glands protects salamanders from many enemies, for whom it is unpleasant and even dangerous. If you grab a salamander by the neck and crush it, juice will splash out from the glands, but the animal can release juice of its own free will and, in case of danger, does this constantly in order to protect itself from enemies. The power of this poison was greatly exaggerated; even Oken dared to claim that children who drank water from the well where the salamanders lived died. Numerous experiments have only proven that this juice burns very strongly when it gets on the mucous membrane, therefore, it produces inflammation, from which small, weak birds, as well as reptiles and reptiles, can die. The fish that lived in Richter's aquarium died from poison released by a salamander that died in the water. Laurenti forced the lizards to bite the salamander; This caused them to have convulsions and they died; on the contrary, dogs, turkeys and chickens, which were fed salamanders cut into pieces, digested this food without harm to themselves, however, the dogs sometimes vomited from it. Abini studied the venom of salamanders in detail and reports the following about it.
“If you overcome,” he says, “the unpleasant feeling that appears in almost every person when looking at these reptiles, dumb and bug-eyed creatures, and carefully place them in the palm of your hand, then they usually sit quite quietly and the warmth of the hand, apparently, helps them even pleasant. If you grab them with fear, trembling hands, so that you involuntarily squeeze them in places, then they splash a few drops of their white juice, which dries quite quickly, and you feel a pleasant musky smell, similar to the smell emitted by a large musk beetle. If If you want to tie a salamander to a board, it defends itself with all its might and at the same time sprays its cutaneous juice at a distance of up to one foot, from which a few drops remain on the pores of the skin. Since I was convinced that the emptying of the cutaneous glands occurs from voluntary muscle movements, I I tried to obtain a large amount of this juice using electricity.To do this, I thoroughly washed several animals, put them in a clean glass vessel covered with a glass plate, passed electromagnet wires through the hole of this plate and was able to expose the animals to electric current. Thus, I got a certain amount of this juice on the walls of the vessel and on the lid."
The juice collected in this way was examined and turned out to be poisonous both when injected into the blood and when it enters the stomach*.

* For humans, the venom of the spotted salamander is not very dangerous, but in many predatory animals it does cause serious poisoning. The average lethal dose at which half of laboratory animals die is considered to be 1.2 mg per 1 kg of victim weight. A fast lizard that bites a salamander in the area of ​​concentration of poisonous glands (parotids) dies literally after 30 seconds, and a viper - after four minutes. Therefore, the fire salamander probably has very few enemies in nature. It can only be eaten by snakes, some large birds and mammals (for example, wild boars). The venom of the spotted salamander has such strong antifungal and antibacterial activity that, according to some data, it destroys even such pathogenic microorganisms as Vibrio cholerae, anthrax bacillus and Staphylococcus aureus. It is even suggested that the original purpose of the appearance and use of venom by the salamander is not related to protection from predators, but to the need to keep moist skin healthy.

Abini even noted that this poison acts faster and stronger if it is put into the mouths of birds and frogs than if it is injected into the blood vessels. But animals that ate the meat of creatures poisoned by this poison remained healthy. However, during these experiments, the part of the body into which the poison was injected was removed, as well as the stomach and esophagus. From his experiments, Abini concludes the following: this poison produces local irritation, which is proven by the redness of the mucous membrane of the mouth and tongue of frogs that have had the poison itself or its solution in water poured into their mouths, as well as by the fact that birds that have received this poison shake their heads violently and open their beak. When taking large doses, the birds soon die, and before that they have convulsions, accompanied by severe pain and fearful excitement; breathing and heart rate increase. A poisoned bird can fly, but cannot stand upright; the legs and fingers are convulsively clenched, the bird lies on its side and begins to quickly spin around. Immediately after taking the poison, the bird screams loudly in pain; death sometimes occurs within a minute, but the heart continues to beat after that, and when it stops, it can be made to beat again through strong irritation; in this case, the muscles of voluntary and involuntary movement contract. With an insignificant dose of poison and its slower action, as is usually the case in frogs, blood circulation and respiration first increase, then numbness of the limbs occurs, and then convulsions begin, which at first do not last long, and subsequently become continuous and are noticeable for several days, until blood circulation and breathing gradually weaken and death finally occurs. Poisoned frogs noticeably change the color of their skin, which becomes lighter and appears thinner, and evaporation from it increases significantly. The mucus sediment, exposed first to pure water and then to alcohol, did not show any more toxic properties. The alcohol solution condensed by evaporation was much more poisonous than the aqueous one; In the alcohol solution, floating needles formed every other day, which, upon evaporation, were combined into brushes. These needles turned out to be very poisonous; they are easily soluble in alcohol, ether and water, and alkalis do not affect them; the aqueous solution gave an acidic reaction. The action of the condensed poison is very fast, and the person immediately vomits.
With good care, a salamander can live in captivity for several years. Peterman had a salamander for 18 years on a tuff rock in the middle of an aquarium; she came up to me every evening famous place to get an earthworm or mealworm if you first tap your finger on a stone. The salamander should be kept indoors where there is a small pond and many holes for it to hide. It can be fed with mealworms, earthworms, insects and slugs; it also eats small salamanders. It is remarkable that this apparently insensitive animal quickly dies from the action of certain substances, for example, table salt has an extremely harmful effect on it.
In the Alps, the common salamander is replaced by a related species alpine salamander(Salamandra atra), which is very similar to the above, but somewhat slimmer and glossy black without spots; it is somewhat smaller than usual and rarely exceeds 11-13 cm.
Its area of ​​distribution extends to the Alps of Savoy, Switzerland, Tyrol, Salzburg and upper Austria, Styria and Carinthia, as well as to the mountainous countries of Württemberg and Bavaria, which touch the Alps. She lives at an altitude of 700-2850 m large quantities, for example, according to Grädler, in Tyrol in damp forests and gorges through which streams flow. It is almost always found in societies of several dozen individuals under stones, moss, rhododendron bushes and dead wood, much like the common salamander.


It is also a lazy, slow and sleepy creature, emerging from its burrows only in wet weather and dying when severe drought sets in. Due to her immobility, the Tyroleans gave her the nickname "Tatter-mann" or "tatter-mandl", which means "dead man", or, in the local sense of the word, "scarecrow". The Alpine salamander, according to Schreiber, differs in its method of reproduction from the common salamander. She will also give birth to live cubs, but not more than two at a time. Although in the ovary of the uterus the eggs are quite large and voluminous and from 30 to 40 eggs pass into the oviducts, like in an ordinary salamander, only one embryo develops in each oviduct at the expense of all the others: all eggs merge into one common yolk, which surrounds the embryo until until it breaks the egg shell and begins to move freely. In each oviduct, about 15 unfertilized eggs remain, which merge into a common viscous mass, which serves as the first food for the embryo. The baby is born when all this mass is destroyed. The embryo here fully develops, reaches a size of 45-50 mm and fills the posterior end of the straight oviduct, which is 35 mm long and 1 cm wide; it lies there with its tail pressed to its body and often double-curved, moves vigorously, often turns in a circle and is born either head-first or tail-first. The gills, which are similar to those of the common salamander, but much larger, reach almost half the length of the body, so that the posterior branch reaches the hind limbs with its tip; however, these gills disappear even before birth and in newly born babies they look like small processes or nodules; Thus, if this salamander is to be seen in the tadpole state, then it must be removed from the mother's body. To do this, the female is killed by putting her in alcohol, which has such little effect on the cubs that, taken out of the mother’s body, they live for several weeks. This amazing vitality proves that the cubs can live without water, and indeed the female lays her cubs, even if in captivity she is given a room with water, always in a dry place. Thus, it turns out that the method of reproduction of the alpine salamander is very unique and is not found in other animals of this order.
The development of eggs takes the same amount of time as in an ordinary salamander, but the time from fertilization to the birth of the baby is much longer, since the tadpoles remain for a very long time in the mother’s body. Females with highly developed young are rarely found before August, but fertilization occurs very late due to the cold climate of this salamander’s habitat; So, not only the lack of water, but also the climate affects the peculiar way of development of the cubs.
Most often, both cubs of one female are of the same size and will be born almost simultaneously, but as an exception, it happens that one of them is born a few days after the other. This apparently happens because the initially fertilized egg dies and another one develops in its place. It often happens that in one oviduct one finds 2 or 3 equally developed eggs, while the rest are more or less crumpled, disfigured and fused together. It follows from this that all eggs of one litter are simultaneously fertilized in the ovaries or in the oviducts, although only two of them fully develop. The method of fertilization has not yet been fully explained, because both the Alpine salamander and the fire salamander have not yet discovered the external male genitalia; fertilization, however, must take place inside the female's body, and therefore the seed must somehow penetrate there. However, it has been observed that before mating, the male crawls under the female and firmly grasps the female’s forelimbs with his front legs. Having thus embraced on the ground, both animals drag themselves into the water and remain there for several hours, resting and swimming, until the mating finally ends. Molting, according to Spengel's observations, occurs in such a way that the old skin is removed by the movement of the subcutaneous muscles up to the upper third of the tail; therefore, this salamander does not need to rub against foreign objects to do this; the skin of the back of the tail is grabbed by the mouth, pulled off and eaten by the animal itself. In all other respects, this salamander is quite similar to an ordinary one.
Tritons(Triturm) are distinguished by an elongated body, four-toed front and five-toed hind legs, a highly compressed laterally, a high tail, as well as a dorsal crest, which in males is strongly developed in the spring, during mating. The arch running from the orbital process of the frontal bone to the squamosal part of the temporal bone in all newts, except the crested one, has a bone and tendon structure. The palatal teeth form two straight lines, very close in front and diverging far behind; the anterior part of these rows reaches a transverse line running along the posterior edge of the internal nasal openings. The tongue is not very large, round or ovoid, and is attached to the lower skin of the oral cavity with a longitudinal strip running in the middle of the lower surface of the tongue; its lateral and posterior edges are more or less free. If we give this genus a broader meaning, which is now accepted by almost all naturalists, then it should be noted that the tail of newts in exceptional cases can be thick, even almost completely round, but it is always noticeable at the top and bottom of the ridge; in addition, the body of some species is sometimes covered with transverse folds, which give the animal an almost ring-shaped structure. The outer cover of newts is not always smooth, and can sometimes be granular and warty. The sexes are easily distinguished by the shape of the cloaca, the outer parts of which in the male are spherically swollen, and in the females they have the shape of a cone, i.e. present a structure exactly the opposite of what one might expect. Fertilization in newts does not occur through copulation, but, according to Zeller’s very thorough research, in a different way, it is the male who deposits gelatinous seed lumps in the water in the form of bells, pyramids or circles; females look for these lumps, separate a seed shaped like a point from the gelatinous mass, and stick this point into the opening of the cloaca. The seed bodies then pass into the interior of the cloaca and reach the tubes of the seed sac, in which they are stored until the need for their activity arises. The movements preceding this method of fertilization are sometimes very similar to copulation and vary among different species of newts. The 21 known species of newt live in Europe, northern Africa, western Asia, northeastern China, eastern Asia and North America*; In Germany there are four species of them. As an exception, all four of these species can be found in one pool, as observed by Kerner near Königstein in Taunus**.

* Currently there are 12 species of the genus Triturus.

* * The genus Triturus is divided into two phylogenetic groups. which are taxonomically given the level of subgenera: Triturus (this includes, for example, the crested and Asia Minor newts) and Palaeotriton (including the common, Carpathian, and filamentous newts). The Alpine newt is either classified as Palaeotriton. or separated into a separate subgenus.

Crested newt(Triturus cristataus) reaches a length of 13-15 cm and is distinguished by the complete absence of a bone or tendon temporal arch on the skull, a serrated dorsal crest and the color of the abdomen. The main color of the back, sides, tail and upper limbs is dark brown with large scattered black spots, and on the sides they are mixed with white spots, often merging with each other. The lower part of the body, starting from the throat, is bright yellow with black spots of varying sizes. The iris of the eye is golden yellow.
In nuptial attire, the crested newt changes greatly. On the upper part of the body and on the tail of the male, there is a tall, highly serrated leathery crest, which begins on the head between the eyes and continues to the end of the tail, but has a deep notch at the base of the tail*.

* Due to the ridges and folds of the skin, the volume of skin respiration in newts is greater than pulmonary respiration.

Besides, yellow the lower part of the body turns into bright orange, and a whitish-blue, as if pearlescent, stripe appears on the sides of the tail; on the head we then notice a very beautiful black and white marble pattern. The female, even in her breeding attire, does not have a crest, but instead a yellow dorsal stripe is often seen, and the yellow color of the abdomen turns into sulfur-yellow and extends without any spots from the base of the tail to its tip. Black rings appear on yellow fingers.
The crested newt's distribution area extends through England, northern and central France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Greece, Turkey and Asia Minor, as well as through Russia. There are four known varieties of this newt, which are found exclusively in the south and east of Europe** and in western Asia.

* * Now they are given the rank of independent species.

Alpine newt(Triturus alpestris) is noticeably smaller than the previous one: its length is 8-9, and females are 9-11 cm. Its temporal arches consist of tendons, the dorsal crest is low, not jagged, the abdomen is without dark spots. The main color of the back is brown or slate gray with dark brown jagged spots, which on the sides of the head, body and tail and on the upper sides of the limbs turn into round black spots on a white field. Black rings are also visible on the fingers. The underside of the body is orange-red and, except for the throat, without any spots. The iris is golden yellow with black spots.
In breeding attire, the male has a low, non-toothed crest on his back, starting behind the head and gradually turning into the fin of the tail; This crest has a whitish-yellow color with transverse, short black stripes, between which short dark triangular spots often appear, with the base facing downwards. The slate-gray color turns bluish on the back, and light blue near the belly; black lateral spots are surrounded by white edges and sometimes merge into stripes. The orange color of the abdomen becomes fiery red; the upper and lower caudal fins become pale yellow with dark spots, and a series of bluish-white spots appear on the sides of the tail. Even at this time, the female usually does not have a crest or it is only marked. The color of her back turns into light or dark gray, even brown or blackish, and is dotted with dark dots everywhere. Large blackish jagged and in places merging spots are more numerous than those of the male and more prominent; black rows of spots on the sides of the body directly border the orange-yellow color of the abdomen, often located in a light bluish belt or at least surrounded by whitish dots; the red-yellow color of the abdomen extends along the underside of the tail to its tip, only a few round black spots are noticeable on the underside of the tail.
The Alpine newt is found in northern and central France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, where it can be found everywhere except the North German Lowland; he also lives in Switzerland, Italy, Austria-Hungary and northern Greece*. In the mountains of the canton of Waadt it rises to 800 m, in northern Italy - up to 2000 m, and in Grisons - up to 2190 m.

* Recently, a decline in the number of alpine newts has been noted due to pollution, drying out and destruction of spawning sites and harsh winters. It was included in the Red Books of the USSR, Ukraine and in Appendix III of the 1979 Berne Convention for the Conservation of European Species wild fauna and their habitats.

Common newt(Tritirus vulgaris) reaches 7.5-8.5 cm in length and is distinguished by its temporal arch, consisting only of a tendon, the ridge on the back is jagged, males have toes on the hind legs trimmed with lobes, the abdomen is spotted, two irregular rows of depressed ones are noticeable on the head glandular pits, the tail is pointed at the end. On top, this newt is olive-green or brown in color, turning on the sides into a delicate, slightly silvery yellowish- White color, the underside of the body is orange-yellow. Dark spots are noticeable all over the body.
In the male's nuptial attire, the tail becomes higher and a crest appears, starting at the back of the head and spreading around the tail; near the anus it does not decrease, but, on the contrary, is especially strongly developed; a rim appears on the toes of the hind legs. The upper part of the body is olive green and the belly bright orange, this orange stripe continuing on the underside of the tail. Large round dark spots are located on the body and tail in longitudinal rows and on the upper and side parts of the head merge into 5 longitudinal stripes; above the yellow stripe of the tail, a bluish pearlescent shiny stripe appears, interrupted by transverse dark spots. At this time, the female does not have a crest, the fin on the tail at the top and bottom has a small width, and there is no edging on the toes of the hind legs. Her back is light olive-green or brown, the yellowish-white color on the sides of the abdomen has a faint golden tint, the orange color in the middle of the abdomen is not as bright as that of the male; dark spots are small, but there are more of them, and they are closer together; These spots merge into narrow jagged longitudinal stripes not only on the head, but also on the sides of the belly and tail.


The common newt represents the most normal look in Germany; it is found throughout Europe except southern France, Spain and Portugal, and also lives in Asia Minor as far as Armenia. A species of this newt, similar in many respects to the filamentous newt, is found in northern Italy, the northeastern shore of the Adriatic Sea and Greece.
Threaded or membranous newt(Triturus helveticus) is equal in height to the common newt and is 7-8 cm long. Its body is thin and slender, and it differs from all other European newts in its bony temporal arch; its dorsal crest is very low, the toes on the male’s hind legs are connected by membranes, the throat is not brightly colored, and two ribs are visible on the sides of the spinal ridge, so that the section of the body turns out to be quadrangular. A thread of varying lengths is attached to the blunt end of the tail, which is directed backwards. The upper part of the body is olive-brown with a yellowish tint with dark spots, and on the head with the same stripes; Sometimes a faint golden tint is noticed on the back. The underparts are dull orange-yellow with a few yellow spots.
Instead of a crest, a male in breeding clothing has a low border on his back, which forms a fin on the upper part of the tail; the toes on the hind legs are connected by a complete web; the main color of the head, back to the lateral border and the upper fin on the tail turns into an olive-brown color, the sides of the head, body and tail become metallic yellow, and the lower half of the body on the sides is shiny white; There is an orange-yellow stripe running through the middle of the abdomen. A beautiful marble pattern of black spots appears on the head, the limbs have a similar pattern or are completely black. There are many irregular and irregularly located dark spots on the back and sides. The throat is colorless, the abdomen has only a few black spots, and the tail spots are arranged in two stripes, between which a bluish shiny longitudinal stripe is noticeable. In the spring, the female has a low tail, the membranes between the toes on the hind legs are undeveloped and the coloring is more uniform, since dark color further spreads to the sides and small spots are not so noticeable. The underside of the body is brighter colored than that of the male, and the orange color of the abdomen extends to the tail up to the last third of it.
The membranous newt lives in northern Spain, France, England, Belgium, Holland, western Germany and Switzerland. France should be considered the central part of its distribution area.


In their habits and way of life, these newts differ so little from each other that we can be content with describing one of them. I will mainly refer to the crested newt and will supplement the description with some observations relating to the lifestyle of other German species.
Newts are usually considered aquatic animals, and this is partly true, since during mating they always live in the water, sometimes they spend several months there, and in other cases they do not leave the water at all. However, it should be borne in mind that they usually spend some time on land, and some species even spend all their time there, except for the time necessary for reproduction. During mating and egg laying, they prefer clean water , surrounded by bushes, as there they find abundant food; They only avoid fast-flowing rivers and streams. The membranous newt loves cold mountain springs and the swamps that surround them. On land it moves clumsily and awkwardly, but in water it swims very quickly, mainly due to its wide tail; they often rise vertically to the surface of the water to take in air and, having descended, release several bubbles to the surface; they descend down, wriggling like a snake, and run along the bottom, guarding or hunting for prey. In the summer they come out of the water and hide under the roots of trees and in earthen holes, and later, in the fall, they gather in whole societies in winter shelters; however, those who have found a pond for themselves, into which many springs flow, often remain in it during the cold season. According to Leydig's observations, newts can live for a very long time without water. “I met them,” says this observer, “at a distance of several hours’ journey from the water, and more than once noticed that puddles in which there were many newts completely dried up during the hot summer and remained without water for several years; this is partly true to puddles lying completely separately, for example, to a puddle located in a quarry on a mountain, where no other water could be found around that these animals could visit.Not without surprise, I noticed that when, after a long time, these puddles were filled again water, the newts appeared there again." Similar observations were made by Moisisovich. He writes about this as follows: “The cold time at Easter 1891, which I spent on the shores of Istria, was the reason that dredging at sea gave almost no results, so I had to take excursions inland. Rocky, partly very deserted and the barren mountainous country was then still covered in places with a light snow cover, and I found animals only under stones.We turned away several hundred fragments of rocks and found quite rich prey there, consisting of centipedes, scorpions, and in places rich in black soil, also earthworms ( Lumbricus complanatus) along with the larvae of various insects. Several times I found, as it seemed to me, traces of lizards, and three times in completely dry places I found stiff young common newts, which lay curled up in small holes. These animals were very pale in color and in height they were half the size of the specimens found near Graz, and, what was especially surprising, they still retained their external gills. I can explain this last circumstance only by the fact that there was a puddle nearby in which the animals made their transformation and which then completely dried up. But during my visit not a trace of water was visible around, and on the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that animals appeared here from a long distance." Every beetle collector often finds female common newts in summer and autumn under large stones. Newts also tolerate severe frosts : several times these animals were found completely frozen and seemed lifeless, but when they thawed they came to life again and moved nimbly, so newts can live very well in winter in a body of water that does not freeze to the very bottom. land, appear already at the end of February, swim merrily in the water, look for each other, swim in pairs and, like fish, beat each other with their tails. If there are many males around one female, then they try to push one another away and the most persistent of them in the end eventually takes possession of the female.This continues in the spring for a long time, sometimes for several weeks.
Gachet observed that the mating male raised his crest, moved it strongly and brought his muzzle closer to the female's muzzle. At the same time, his tail constantly moves and bends so much that it hits the female on the sides. Both animals touch each other with their heads, but the rear parts of the body are more distant and form an acute angle between themselves*.

* Recently, the behavior of newts has been actively studied. It has been established that for a number of species even combinations of mating dance poses are species specific. Typically, such demonstrations consist of the following ethological (behavioral) elements: side display - the male is in front of the female sideways and, as a rule, at an angle of 60° to the ground; jerk - the male, bending his tail at the base, pushes the water towards the female with his legs, moving the back of his body in an arc relative to the stationary head; sharp blows with the tip of the male's tail in front of the female's head; arching the back upward; pushing the male's muzzle into the female's body; arch - the position of the male with his body curved in an arc above the head of the female and wagging his tail; sniffing a female by a male. Experts have found that newts are capable of making sounds at a frequency of 3000-4000 Hz, the duration of which usually does not exceed 0.5 seconds. They have a well-developed sense of smell: the number of receptor brushes per 1 cm2 in the common newt, for example, reaches 200 thousand, which exceeds this figure for most tailed amphibians. The sense organs of newts play an important role in reproductive (sexual) behavior, which is manifested in the repeated repetition in water of the above-described elements of the mating dance (mating game).

Zeller found that in the alpine and spiny newts, the axolotl and other tailed reptiles, real mating does not occur, but that the male deposits peculiarly arranged seed packets in the water and attaches them to the bottom of the puddle, and the female then finds them. She separates the seed ball, surrounded by a gelatinous substance, from the package and takes it into the open opening of the cloaca. Zeller suggests, and we must agree with him, that this method of fertilization may, with some slight deviations, also be characteristic of Proteus and, in general, all tailed reptiles.
The newly laid egg of the crested newt, according to Rusconi, is at first spherical, whitish-yellow in color and surrounded by a sticky mass, which, however, is not closely associated with the egg. If you move an egg in water with a brush, it always falls on the side on which it originally lay. At the same time, you can notice that only one half of it is white, and the other, on the contrary, is brown, and the dark color corresponds to the yolk, and the light color to the white; The white is always heavier than the yolk, and therefore the egg always lies white side down. After just three days, the shape of the egg changes slightly and with the help of a magnifying glass you can see the outline of the embryo. On the fifth day, the embryo assumes a curved position and one can distinguish the head, body and tail, and even small elevations near the head, corresponding to future gills and forelimbs. On the seventh day, all the individual parts stand out even more and you can notice a fold separating the head from the body; the spinal column is also already noticeable. On the ninth day, the embryo changes its position and the lower part of the head and torso can be seen; at this time, the tail already has the appearance of a thin appendage, traces of the mouth and eyes are noticeable, the embryo begins to move and its heart contracts and expands. Movements are made even more often on the tenth day; The embryo changes its position three or four times within 24 hours, the lower parts of the body are covered with black spots, four threads appear on the sides of the head, which, as we will see later, serve the tadpole hatched from the egg to attach to foreign objects. The next day, leaves appear on the gills and you can see the movement of still whitish blood. On the twelfth day, the lateral leaves of the gills stand out more clearly, the movements of the embryo are very fast and varied, so that the walls of the egg protrude in many places. On the thirteenth day, the shell of the egg bursts, the tadpole hatches from the egg and, through its threads, attaches itself to leaves and other objects; if you touch him, he moves his body and tail, but usually remains motionless for several hours. Sometimes it happens that for no apparent reason it suddenly seems to awaken, begins to swim with the help of lateral movements of its tail, and then again attaches itself to some leaf and remains motionless for many hours. Sometimes the tadpole falls to the bottom and lies there as if dead. The eyes are barely open, the mouth barely opens yet, the forelimbs look like blunt processes, but more and more leaves grow on the gills. With the development of the insides that occurs at this time, the animal life of the tadpole intensifies: it avoids what is unpleasant to it and looks for what it likes. He begins to hunt for small crustaceans floating in the water and deftly grabs them; when very hungry, it even attacks other tadpoles and bites off their gills and tail. The forelimbs gradually develop, and when the tadpole reaches 2 cm in length, the hind limbs appear. According to Bedriaga's observations, the tadpole reaches 50-82 mm in length, and after 3 months it takes the form of an adult animal.
Leydig repeated Rusconi's observations and extended them to other species, so that he significantly expanded the information about the development of newts. “The slow or rapid development of the embryo in the egg,” he says of the crested newt, “depends largely on temperature. Captured newts spawned in early April in a room at 18°-19°, while those living in freedom did this when at noon in the shade it was 13 ° -14 °. When free, the female newt always attaches eggs one at a time to various objects in the water, most likely to the leaves of living plants, but in other cases also to torn stems, pieces of wood and stones; in captivity or when she is frightened, the female releases several eggs at a time in short cords, which fall to the bottom of the vessel. early age easily distinguishable from tadpoles of other amphibians. The tadpole hatched from the egg retains the yellow-green color of the egg yolk for some time, and subsequently two black stripes appear on the back and black spots all over the body, so that the yellow-green color gradually disappears, and a very narrow whitish border is formed on the pale tail. In mid-July, tadpoles that reach 5 cm in length are very beautiful. On four thin legs, very long and delicate fingers are noticeable; the gills, especially the front ones, are unusually well developed; the white border on the tail has become wider and at the end forms a gradually thinning thread, about 1 cm in length; in addition to a thin blackish mesh visible on the body and tail, large black spots and a number of small yellow dots are formed on the sides and tail. In general, the main color still remains light olive-brown, on which individual black spots are scattered; the stalks of the gills, sides and abdomen have a golden hue. At the beginning of September, the metallic sheen disappears, the body color becomes olive-gray and, in addition to black spots, vague white spots appear. A pale yellow longitudinal stripe on the abdomen and white cutaneous warts on the sides of the body are noticeable. In appearance, the tadpole already closely resembles an adult animal; the gills became much smaller, and along with the fish-like appearance the golden and silvery sheen characteristic of fish disappeared.”
Schreibers and Filippi were the first to observe that, under certain constraining conditions, the sexually mature newt retains appearance tadpole and breathe through gills. It was in the Alpine newt that tadpoles with fully developed genitals were observed several times. Filippi rightly notes that this circumstance can serve as evidence in favor of the origin of species from one another: it obviously brings newts closer to fish-like amphibians than hitherto thought*. According to Leydig, this phenomenon, which Kohlman calls “neoteny,” should be considered as an animal’s adaptation to external conditions.

* Occasionally, in artificial reservoirs with steep walls (concreted ponds, wells), which do not allow amphibians to reach land, neotenic (capable of reproduction) larvae of crested newts can actually be found. In the Moscow region, such larvae were found in water supply channels running from the Uchinsky reservoir to Moscow. Such finds are known from Moldova, Ukraine (Carpathians), and Germany. In our time, neotenic populations of the common newt have been described, first identified in Abkhazia and Gatcha stump near St. Petersburg. And in Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy, independent populations of the Alpine newt have been discovered, consisting almost exclusively of neotenic larvae, which reproduce and live in this state for up to 7 years. A number of such populations are given subspecies status.

Newts live by carnivory from an early age and feed exclusively on animal substances. At first they hunt very small creatures, namely small crustaceans, insect larvae and worms, later they pursue larger prey, such as insects floating on the surface of the water, soft-bodied earthworms, tadpoles and even young newts; they also eat frog eggs. They cannot be called harmful; rather, they provide benefits by killing mosquito larvae*.

* About 90% of the food of common newts consists of the larvae of long-legged mosquitoes, biters and pushers.

In addition to the changes in color noticed during breeding, newts have the ability to change the color of their skin more or less voluntarily; They also have mobile pigment cells. Leydig once placed a beautifully colored newt, which had until then lived in a large pool, in a small jar in order to more easily draw it. To his surprise, he noticed that the animal, frightened by this relocation, noticeably changed color: its color became obviously paler. When the animal was again moved to a spacious aquarium with aquatic plants, its excitement gradually subsided and after half an hour it again acquired a brilliant color. This observation alone should have reminded Leydig of a similar phenomenon in the tree frog and led him to think about motile pigment cells; however, he soon noticed an even stronger change in color. All the newts that lived in his cold room were pale in color, while those that lived at a higher temperature had a darker color; when Leydig transferred the pale newts into a heated room to sketch them, their color changed: the light slate gray color turned into a dark slate blue and the large, clear, brown spots disappeared - in a word, the animals changed color in every way. This phenomenon depends, according to Leydig, on the influence nervous system: Excitement, fear and temperature changes cause color changes. Amphibians of hot countries differ from ours in this respect in that the change in color is not so strong and does not occur so quickly.
In the spring, newts molt in 2-8 days, less often after mating, and while on land, they probably do not molt at all. Although molting occurs quite quickly, it probably has a strong effect on the animals, since before this they lose their liveliness and become lazy. Just before molting, the skin becomes dull and dark, as it gradually lags behind the body; this probably causes an unpleasant sensation for the animal, and that is why the newts do not seem entirely healthy at this time. When the time comes, the newt tries with its front legs to form a hole in the old skin near the lower jaw, then separates the scalp near the end of the muzzle, bends its whole body first to the right side, sometimes to the left, often shakes itself and sticks its head out of the water. By repeated contortions of his torso and scraping his body with his front legs, he slowly peels off his skin; when the forelimbs have already freed themselves from the old skin, he turns and shakes himself violently, so that the wrinkled outer skin is pushed back to the base of the tail, then he grabs it with his mouth and rips it off whole, just as a man takes off his shirt. Shedding usually ends within one hour, but sometimes lasts two or more hours and is unusually tiring for the newt. Often other newts help the molter and swallow the skin captured in the mouth, but sometimes, not without effort, they excrete it undigested. It happens, for example, that the swallowed skin partly sticks out from their anus and they try with all their might to pull it out with their paws and mouth; this observation, however, requires confirmation, and many explain it by the fact that their skin also peels off from their intestines. If shedding occurs quickly and successfully, then the separated skin is very beautiful: it is turned inside out, but is not torn anywhere, so that you can see each finger separately, only where the eyes are, there are two large holes. Under ordinary circumstances, newts do not make any sounds other than the sound resulting from the release of air bubbles from their mouths. However, they are not completely voiceless. If you touch them suddenly and quite strongly, they emit a clear croaking tone, which is similar to the voice of other reptiles.
The life of a newt in captivity was best described by Glaser. According to his observations, these animals are unpretentious and therefore are not difficult to keep in an ordinary aquarium. There they are quite entertaining, very voracious, and if you exercise them a lot and feed them often, they become tame. If you approach them, they stand at the bottom of the aquarium, raising their heads up like dogs and looking intently at every approaching person, waiting for a handout. During the first time of life in captivity, they are timid and fearful, constantly hiding, coming to the surface of the water after ten minutes to let out air and gain new ones, but then quickly hiding again in their shelters. When hunger begins to torment them and they are given the opportunity to satisfy it, they become bolder and, finally, so tame that they remain visible in the aquarium all day, wandering along the bottom or swimming and carefully looking around, trying to spot some prey. .
Newts, accustomed to the darkness of ditches and swamps, see poorly with their small eyes. They are also very awkward when grasping and swallowing prey, turning their heads in all directions to push food deeper into their mouths, and swallowing with difficulty, nodding their heads, rising on their forelimbs and convulsively jerking their whole body. Sometimes they yawn, in the full sense of the word, and generally seem to be the personification of laziness and inaction. Any food is suitable for them; they grab and swallow greedily very small dead fish that are brought to their mouth, but in the same way they grab crumbs of bread, raw meat and all sorts of other substances. Therefore, they can be kept in a warm room in winter without any difficulty.
Out of fear of large newts, young and small species constantly hide. Half a dozen small young black newts, 3 cm long, were very soon all eaten by the adults, and Glaser observed that the large newts grabbed and swallowed the common newts placed with them. In general, newts of another species cannot be kept together with a crested newt.
Feeding newts with earthworms gives great pleasure. At the same time, just as when feeding on flies, they grab each other’s legs with their mouths, spin and tug violently, and finally move away from each other; then the winner returns and takes the spoils as a reward. It often happens that while two large newts are trying to grab an insect thrown by them, an agile frog living with them in the same aquarium quickly jumps from afar and grabs the prey under the noses of the clumsy and half-blind newts. Since newts have poor vision, it is quite difficult to get them to notice food attached to the end of a stick; Out of greed, they often grab it with their mouths, but sometimes it happens that they grab the end of a stick with their jaws, and then they can be pulled out of the water. Glaser has seen crested newts, with great effort, eating pond snails and bobbins out of their shells on several occasions. These soft-bodied creatures stick their bodies far out of their shells, looking for a plant to feed on. It happens that at the same time they catch the eye of a hungry newt and, although he is very clumsy and slow in his movements, he still grabs the even slower-moving soft-bodied one, with a strong tilt of his head he gradually pulls it out of the shell and swallows it. Probably, in ponds, puddles and ditches, snails constitute the main food of newts, along with young and small animals of their own species, while on land, under stones and in burrows, as well as at night, when they crawl ashore, they eat slugs and earthworms . The crested newts that lived near Glaser spent the hot summer time in the holes of the tuff emerging in the form of an island in the middle of the aquarium, and did not move at all. Only when it became cooler did they reappear and begin looking for food, and readily ate large house flies. Glaser noticed that the newt, having swallowed a large winged female ant, spat her out again and did not grab her again, although she moved in front of him. Newts are also reluctant to eat dried ant pupae, which are often fed to goldfish and frogs in winter. One American newt(Molge viridescens) swallows, according to Piquet's observations, small pea shells (Pisidium) along with their contents. Sturkey describes the greed of crested newts in much the same way as Glaser. “If they were given,” he writes to me, “a large number of earthworms, then they fought among themselves for a long time before any of them touched one worm, and this happened even when there was enough food for everyone. Often they grabbed each other by the upper jaw and fought in this way for a long time. Finally, their anger passes and they begin to eat, and it happens that two newts, grabbing an earthworm from opposite ends, collide with their noses when swallowing. The prey is usually not torn in half, but the stronger newt pulls it out a worm from the mouth of another." Small newts behave in an aquarium almost the same way as large ones.
Observations were made on newts regarding their vitality and ability to reproduce lost body parts. Their insensitivity to temperature changes and ability to withstand the effects of cold for a long time have long been known; They also learned that cut off limbs grow back. Spallanzani and Blumenbach performed cruel experiments on them, cutting off their legs, tail and eyes. These experiments proved that all these parts of the body were completely renewed, and they noticed that new bones with all joints were formed in the grown limbs. The cut off tail grows back, is the same size as the old one, and vertebrae are formed in it again; cut off limbs grow back several times; even broken jaws grow back. Over the course of three months, Spallanzani's newts replaced 687 bones that had been taken away. Blumenbach cut out 4/5 of the newt's eyes and was convinced that after 10 months he had formed a new eye with a cornea and iris, as well as a lens, in a word, a completely new organ, differing from the previous one only in a slightly smaller size.
Erber tells an example of the survivability of the newt. “He already ate one of my newts, and then disappeared. A month later, in the kitchen, they pulled a box away from the wall and found behind it, probably spat out by a snake, a newt; when moving the box, the newt’s front leg was torn off; the animal seemed completely dried out, and I barely found it signs of life; I put him on the ground of a flower pot. When they began to water the flowers and doused the newt, he began to move and even tried to crawl. I then put him in clean water and began to feed him earthworms. Within a few days he began to move faster , after three weeks, instead of the severed leg, he had a small shapeless appendage, and after 4 months the leg had grown completely. From then on, they began to pay great attention to the newt, and he soon learned to crawl on glass and take food from hands. The jar where he lived , stood between the window frames. Late autumn in severe frost the water froze and the jar burst. At the same time, Triton also froze, but since I wanted to put him in alcohol, I placed the remains of the jar in a large vessel with water and put it on the stove so that the ice would melt; At the same time, I completely forgot about the newt, but I soon noticed that it came to life again from the warmth and was trying with all its might to escape from the hot bath. I put him back in cold water and after this incident he lived with me for another whole year.”
The most beautiful of European species should be considered marble triton(Triturus marmoratus), an animal from 13-14 cm in length, which differs from other species by its tendinous arches, a non-serrated dorsal crest and a dark abdomen with white spots; in the spring, the male has a high straight dorsal crest, which forms a deep notch at the base of the tail, and the female has a groove on her back instead of a ridge. This newt's skin is constantly uneven and warty; On the head behind the ears and along the lateral line, small openings of the glands are very noticeable. The upperside is grass green or olive green with a marbled black pattern; the dorsal and caudal crests are covered with transverse black and white stripes; A silvery-white stripe runs along the sides of the tail. The underside of the body is gray, brown or black with large black and small white spots; sometimes a marble pattern is formed here too. Black rings are visible on green fingers. The female has an orange-yellow or red dorsal stripe instead of a dorsal crest. This beautiful animal lives in Portugal, Spain and France*.

* Such a magnificent coloring of a fairly large newt (total length up to 16 cm) became the reason for the catch of the marbled newt by terrariumists, and therefore its number has noticeably decreased.

Although the marbled newt is found in France more often than the fire salamander, it still belongs to the rare tailed amphibians of this country and Spain should be considered its real homeland. Only in early spring, according to Latasta, can it be seen in ditches, springs and puddles, but at other times of the year it lives on land, like the fire salamander, in damp and shady areas and most often in pairs; This is where he spends the winter. This is a nocturnal animal, like the salamander, and it feeds on the same things as it does.


Fertilization and egg laying occur in the same way as in other newts. “Tadpoles,” says Gachet, move very quickly, swim in jerks, never approach the shore, but always stay in the middle of the reservoir and remain on the surface of the water for a very long time, without moving. At the slightest disturbance or if someone approaches them object, the tadpoles quickly escape and dive very deftly." The marbled newt breeds from early February to late May; its tadpoles, very similar to the tadpoles of the crested newt, but differing from them in a green tint, were caught by Latast in mid-April and were then 7 cm long; On May 15, they turned into adult animals. Bedriaga says that the tadpoles of this newt reach 43-70 mm in length. When the marbled newt comes to land, its smooth, mucous skin, like that of other newts, becomes matte and granular. If he is suddenly thrown into the water, then, according to Fischer's observations, his entire body is covered with a silvery layer of air and he can then dive only with difficulty.
Spiny or ribbed newt (Pleurodeles wain) has a slender and elongated body, but quite strong, the length of the head is somewhat greater than its width, the muzzle is blunt, flat and rounded, like a toad, the tail is strongly compressed from the sides and has the appearance of a knife blade, rounded at the end and with a thin fin both above and below. Neither the male nor the female has a leathery crest on the back, the temporal arch is bony, and the palatal teeth are moved forward so much that they stand much further than the internal nasal opening. The roundish tongue is small, attached at the front and free at the back and sides. The front legs have 4 and the hind legs have 5 toes, not connected by membranes. The outer skin is glandular and granular, and on the border between the back and sides there is a series of large horny tubercles, from which the very sharp ends of the ribs often protrude. Michaelles says that the back of this newt is dirty brown with a gray tint and inconspicuous spots, while the belly is ocher-yellow with small round blackish-gray spots. Schreibers, who observed a large number of these newts, states, on the contrary, that the main color of the upper part of the body is a dirty ocher-yellow, which in old females turns into gray, and in males into a red tint, sometimes in the latter it becomes brown, olive-green and even blackish. The underside of the tola is usually paler than the upper and covered with rather small, irregularly rounded blackish spots, which stand alone or sometimes more or less merge; as an exception, there are so many of them that they almost completely displace the main color. The lower edge of the caudal fin and the tips of the fingers are yellowish or orange-yellow; numerous warts on the body have black horny bumps at the end. Young newts differ from older ones in being lighter in color, turning brick-red on the upper side, and with a uniform belly. Large tadpoles are whitish or light yellow on top with numerous, mostly merging, dark ash-gray spots, while the underside of the body is white with many small gray dots. Of the three bundles of gills, the middle one is the shortest, while the posterior one is longer than the others and its tip reaches the fold of the forelimbs. The tail has a length equal to the length of the body, is strongly compressed from the sides and has a very high fin on top. The skin of tadpoles is almost smooth. Fully mature specimens are 18-21 cm in length, but can reach 23 cm; these large specimens are found in northern Africa. Young newts that have just completed their transformation are about 6 cm long, but tadpoles are often found that are not inferior in size to adult newts and are twice as long as young ones that have just completed their transformation, and are 6 or 8 times larger in body volume.


The spiny newt differs from other tailed aquatic animals more in its skeleton than in appearance and coloring. It has a large number of vertebrae, namely 56: the first vertebra has no ribs, and the next 14 have well-developed ribs, which are attached to the transverse processes of the vertebrae by two heads, have very sharp ends and are about 8 mm in length. The pelvic bones are attached to the large transverse processes of the sixteenth vertebra, and the hind limbs are attached to them; the other vertebrae are in a very long tail. No newt has such a large number and such developed ribs. Its skull is rounder and flatter than that of other newts, and is distinguished by a bony temporal arch. On the edge of the jaws there are sharp teeth, the number of which on each jaw is 48-60; old animals have fewer teeth than young ones. In the latter, 12 very small bony teeth are visible on each palatine bone, while in adults only a saw-tooth strip remains there.
The spiny newt has only been found in southwestern Spain, Portugal and Morocco and appears to live only in known localities. Waltl, who discovered it and after whom it is named, found it in reservoirs that are common in Andalusia. Some of these reservoirs are 6-10, and others even 30 m deep, and only a few of them are so constructed that you can catch newts in them using a long stick and a net. Newts live here in large numbers, but for the above reasons it is difficult to catch them, and the inquisitive naturalist has to be content with observations from afar. Later we learned that this newt is found not only in reservoirs, but also in ponds and puddles, where it is much easier to catch. Bedriaga suggests that adult newts of this species can live well in deep waters, but they certainly require shallow puddles to reproduce. Sure, spiny newts are forced into deep wells against their will, but they appear to live their entire lives in water. Their skin secretions are weaker and their vitality is stronger than that of other newts. These are nocturnal animals that prefer dark places to light ones, grow very quickly and are extremely voracious. They molt monthly during the winter and, like other newts, swallow their skin.
Before mating, the male, according to Latast, crawls under the female, squeezes her front legs from front to back with his paws, and the animals remain in this position for several hours. Bedriaga observed this mating, which takes place in water over several days, but neither he nor other naturalists saw the transfer of seed to eggs. Bedriaga suggests that the crested newt lays eggs twice a year: in July and August, and then in February and March.
Leydig tried to prove that the often-occurring perforation of the skin by the tips of the ribs is a painful phenomenon and occurs because the animal contracts strongly when it is grabbed and defends itself from the enemy with the sharp ends of its ribs. Perhaps he is right, but perforation of the skin by the ribs is so often noticed in animals and in the wild, as Bedriaga proved, that this phenomenon should be considered distinctive feature this strange animal.
Spectacled salamanders(Salamandrina) differ mainly in that they have 4 fingers on all limbs and a bony temporal arch; their body is elongated, the tail is round, sharp at the end and with a sharp edge at the top and bottom; there are no postauricular glands on the head and the skin of the entire body is granular. The palatal teeth form two, at first almost parallel, and at the rear strongly diverging rows, the anterior edge of which does not extend beyond the internal nasal openings. The tongue is large, long, narrowed in front, flatly rounded at the back and attached to the front part, so that not only the back half, but also the sides of the tongue are free.
The only species of this genus is spectacled salamander(Salamandrina tetdigitata), which the Italians call tarantalina. The upper part of the body is matte black, with the yellowish-red spectacled pattern above the eyes standing out very clearly; there is a white spot on the black throat, and on the light belly there are many irregular black spots and dots; the area near the anus, the inside of the limbs and the underside of the tail are a beautiful carmine red color. This animal is much smaller in height than an ordinary salamander; its length reaches 8-10 cm, of which 2/3 is on the tail.
This beautiful salamander lives on the shores Mediterranean Sea, in northern and central Italy and on the island of Sardinia. It is found in mountainous and shady places, but does not go high into the mountains, but prefers hilly areas with temperate climate. Until 1863, information about the spectacled salamander was fragmentary, and even Ramorino’s short work, which appeared in the above year, remained little known. Only in 1868 did Lesson publish detailed description this animal, which he later added to.
In the vicinity of Genoa, the spectacled salamander is very common and is often found in the mountains that surround this beautiful city in the form of an amphitheater. From these mountains many small streams flow into the sea, which after rains turn into rapid torrents, and then almost completely dry up, and in some places only small puddles remain, in the light water of which many plants grow and numerous insect larvae live. These mountains are not covered with forests, or even bushes and bushes. Spectacled salamanders stay close to the above-mentioned puddles, hide there under stones, or even live in semi-dried mud. On rainy days, especially in spring and autumn, salamanders come out of their shelters; in the summer this happens only after heavy rainfalls, which, however, in the vicinity of Genoa are very rare at this time of year. They can be seen much more often on bright and quiet winter days, even in January. They feed mainly on ants and small spiders. In the first warm spring days, it is in March that spectacled salamanders go into the water to lay eggs, and then the females can be seen in the above-mentioned puddles. Those that appear first choose the best places for themselves, namely the walls of rocks, which are not subject to strong surf of water, so that the eggs attached to them are not so easily washed away by the streams that intensify after the rain. When the best places are occupied, the other females must be content with those that remain unoccupied, and stick their eggs to the stems and branches of plants lying in the water, as well as to the leaves at the bottom of the puddle. It often happens that many eggs are washed away by water and carried out to sea; sometimes, but much less frequently, they die because the puddles dry up completely in the summer. According to Lesson's observations, only females go into the water; at least neither this naturalist nor any of his assistants noticed a single male there. Mating therefore takes place on land.


The laid eggs are surrounded by mucus, like those of frogs, and in their development at first they do not differ significantly from the development of frog eggs. On the 18th day of its life in freedom, the tadpole develops fingers, and after 50-52 days the transformation is completely completed. In general, the tadpoles of the spectacled salamander are much less mobile than the tadpoles of frogs: they lie for a long time at the bottom on some stone and occasionally only move to grab prey. According to Lesson's observations, they undoubtedly feed exclusively on small animals, and therefore should be classified as carnivores. Lesson himself saw how they swallowed insect larvae, and also became convinced in another way that tadpoles die if they are not given animal food. Camerano raised many spectacled salamander tadpoles, but almost all of them died; he came up with the idea of ​​feeding the others meat: he cut the raw meat into very thin strips, attached them to the end of a wire and moved them in the water to give the meat the appearance of living creatures. The tadpoles swallowed the meat greedily; they were fed in this way for 15 days, and they completely completed their transformation 55 days after hatching. The gills almost completely disappeared five days before the end of the transformation, and the tadpoles often rose to the surface of the water to take air into their lungs, which, however, they had done before.
In June, young, newly developed spectacled salamanders can be seen in convenient places, and the next year they reach their real size. They run slowly and swim by lateral movements of their tail, but, however, are rather weak, so that after rainstorms they are often carried away from the mountains by water. After spawning, they moult; their skin secretes mucus in the same way as that of an ordinary salamander, but in much smaller quantities. According to Fisher's observations, the spectacled salamander does not, like other newts, have the ability to regenerate a severed tail and limbs.
The same naturalist noticed that the light pattern on the head of the spectacled salamander is subject to many changes: in males it may even not be there at all. Although it is common in some places, these salamanders can only be seen in large numbers in the spring or fall. When touched, she lies motionless. The dry, non-mucous skin is less sensitive to heat than that of other salamanders. The spectacled salamander is a diurnal animal and its movements are mainly guided by vision; in addition, she apparently has a well-developed taste. She has no voice and is difficult to scare with any noise. She lives in water only during spawning. If fed with live flies and beetle larvae, it tolerates captivity very well and also gets along well with other individuals of its species; They do not recognize their teacher, and in general their understanding is extremely weak.

Life of animals. - M.: State Publishing House of Geographical Literature. Great Soviet Encyclopedia

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One of the first Spanish travelers, Hernandez, says that near the city of Mexico in the lakes there live fish with soft skin and four legs similar to the legs of lizards, and that these fish are about a cubit long and about an inch thick: their... ... Animal Life

A true family of tailed amphibians. Fertilization is internal. 45 species, in Eurasia and Northern. America. They live along the banks of water bodies. In the west of Ukraine, there is a fire salamander, up to 70 cm long, black and yellow in color, secretions from the skin glands are poisonous... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

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Among the representatives of amphibians there are very unusual creatures, the appearance of which is very bright and memorable. These animals include the fire salamander, a tailed amphibian of the salamander family. The discoverer of this species is considered to be the scientist Carl Linnaeus, who discovered these creatures in 1758. The salamander, or fire lizard, is an amazing representative of amphibians.

Appearance of a fire salamander

It is not for nothing that this representative of the salamander family received such a telling name, because it has an incredibly bright color. Its body color is black with bright yellow or bright orange spots. The average body length is 20 centimeters. The abdominal part of the body has a brown or black tint, sometimes with light splashes. The salamander's paws are small, short, but quite powerful. She has no webbing between her fingers.

The animal’s head is round, with two expressive black eyes located on it. The salamander also has special glands on its head that are responsible for producing poison. This poison is quite dangerous, in particular for mammals. It has a paralyzing effect. For humans, this toxic substance is not as dangerous as for animals; if suddenly the poison of a fire salamander gets on the human mucosa, it will only cause a burning sensation.

Some representatives have exactly a fiery color - bright red with black spots

Where does the fire salamander live?

The habitat of this animal is quite extensive. The yellow-black salamander can be found in countries such as: Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Albania, Slovakia, Spain, Ukraine, Turkey, the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Poland , Croatia, Austria, Romania - that is, as you can see - this is practically the whole of Europe.

Animal lifestyle

The salamander chooses mixed and deciduous forests for living; it also settles along river banks and in the foothills. It happens that the fire salamander climbs into the mountains, but not higher than 2000 above sea level. Mostly, this amphibian leads a sedentary lifestyle.

IN ancient mythology Many peoples say that the salamander is born from fire. It is not true. However, it is true that this amphibian is lured by the smell of smoke.

Its movements on the ground are slow, and in general the fire salamander moves little. The animal is most active at night. During the day, the salamander hides in old stumps, abandoned holes, under fallen trees, and in tall grass. So she avoids direct sunlight, which she does not tolerate well (since she is a cold-blooded animal).

From approximately mid-autumn to early spring, the fire salamander goes to winter. Its “winter” home is piles of fallen leaves. Sometimes several dozen of these animals gather and spend the winter together.

What does a fire salamander eat?

The main food for this amphibian are caterpillars, butterflies, spiders, various slugs, earthworms In addition, a fire salamander can catch and eat even a small newt or a frog.

Salamander Reproduction

Waking up after hibernation, the fire salamander begins to reproduce. Mating games for these animals take place on land.

In males, a spermatophore is formed (a sac in which the germ cells are located), he “lays” it on the soil, and the female, pressing against this sac, produces fertilization. After this, some individuals lay fertilized eggs in the water, and some leave them inside themselves. Accordingly, fire salamander larvae appear either in the aquatic environment, hatching from eggs, or directly from the mother’s body, through viviparity.

Little fire salamanders, having reached three years of age, become fully adult individuals and can reproduce independently. In nature, these tailed amphibians live approximately 14 years. But there is information about individual representatives who lived in captivity, whose age reached up to 50 years!

Salamander- This amphibian animal, which people were afraid of even in ancient times. Myths were created about her and mystical abilities were attributed to her. This is mainly due to its toxicity and bizarre coloring. If you translate her name from the Persian language, it means “burning from within.”

salamander refer to class of animals amphibians, although they resemble them in appearance, should not be confused with them. The latter are reptiles. The body of this representative of amphibians is elongated and smoothly passes into the tail part. Dimensions range from 5-180 cm. The skin feels moist and smooth to the touch.

The color scheme in which different types are painted salamanders, is almost limitless, it can be seen on many photo these animals. The amphibian can be black, yellow, olive, red and other shades. And her back is decorated with stripes, dots and spots of various shapes and shades.

Salamanders have short and stocky legs. The forelimbs have 4 fingers, and the hind limbs have 5. There are no claws. On the flattened head there are bulging, dark eyes with rather developed eyelids.

There are also special glands (mumps) that are common to all amphibians. They then produce a poisonous secretion that causes convulsions and paralysis in animals trying to eat them. These amphibians also have amazing property: They have the ability to regrow their lost limbs or tail. In the process of evolution, the group divided into lungless, cryptobranchs and true salamanders.

Their respiratory systems are structured differently. Lungless animals breathe through the skin and mucous membrane of the mouth. The cryptobranchs use gills, and the latter have fully formed lungs. Salamanders live in almost all countries with a warm and humid climate that suits them. But their greatest diversity is found in North America.

Salamander species

Describe all kinds of it animal it is impossible in one article, so below are the most unusual representatives of the group salamanders. The largest amphibian on the planet is the Chinese giant salamander. You can meet it only in the reservoirs of this country. It reaches 180 cm in length and weighs more than 70 kg.

Pictured is a Chinese giant salamander

The next species, the Lusitanian salamander, has an unusual method of hunting. She, like, catches prey with her tongue. Its body color is black, with two narrow golden stripes running along the ridge. She lives in Spain and Portugal.

Pictured is a Lusitanian salamander

The alpine salamander lives high in the mountains; it settles between the rocks, near mountain rivers. The tree salamander deftly crawls along trunks, jumps well on branches and squeaks loudly. Its color is camouflage: a light or dark shade of brown. Lives in Mexico and California.

Alpine salamander

The most prolific spring salamander lives in the United States and Canada. She can lay more than 130 eggs at a time and is easily recognized by her red color with small dark spots.

Spring salamander

The most popular of salamanders- This fiery. In addition, she is the champion in life expectancy in her group - 50 years. She has a bright color: black and orange. It avoids water and goes down to it only during the breeding season. On photo you can see all the beauty fire salamander.

Pictured is a fire salamander

In the Carpathians, it is possible to find the most poisonous representative of this group - alpine black. In groups, these amphibians live in rock gorges and damp forests. Their poison causes severe burns on the mucous membranes of humans.

Character and lifestyle of the salamander

Salamanders, although they are loners, gather in groups before hibernation in October. To survive this unfavorable period for them together on land, in heaps of fallen leaves. They hunt mainly at night, and during the day they hide in shelters from direct rays of the sun. As a rule, there should be a body of water near their habitat.

They overtake their prey with a sharp jerk and cover it with their body. After a short struggle, the victim is swallowed whole. Natural enemies at salamanders a lot to save animal leaves its tail or limbs in their claws and teeth, and quickly runs away.

Although these amphibians are poisonous, their secretion does not cause mortal harm to humans. It can only cause irritation on the hands, and if it gets on the mucous membranes, it can cause a burn to the mouth or eyes. Therefore, after touching an amphibian, you need to wash your hands well so as not to harm yourself through carelessness.

Today, many people want to keep this mythical amphibian at home. Buy a fire salamander You can buy it in special nurseries or pet stores. They will need a large horizontal terrarium to live. A mixture of leaves, sphagnum and peat is usually poured onto its bottom. There is a small pond inside. The lighting should be dim and the temperature should not exceed 25 degrees.

Salamander nutrition

The salamander's diet largely depends on its habitat. Amphibians living on land subsist on slugs and earthworms. Larger representatives may attack small ones. Salamanders that live in water prefer to catch crayfish and amphibians.

Salamander reproduction and lifespan

On average, salamanders live about 20 years, the duration depends on the size of the particular species. Small species reach sexual maturity by 3 years, and large ones by 5. Cryptobranchs lay eggs, and true salamanders are viviparous or ovoviviparous.

Amphibians breed throughout the year, but the peak of activity is observed in the spring, after emerging from hibernation. During this period, the gland filled with spermatophore swells in males. They lay it directly on the ground, and the female absorbs this material with her cloaca. In an aquatic environment, fertilization occurs differently: the male releases a spermatophore directly onto the laid clutch of eggs.

In viviparous animals, the development of larvae in the womb lasts 10-12 months. But out of 60 eggs, only 2 cubs are born; the remaining eggs are only food for them. The larvae of aquatic amphibians emerge from the eggs after 2 months. And they are born with already formed gills.

The pygmy salamander attaches its eggs to the roots of underwater plants. The larvae appear after 2 months, and after another 3, the young individuals come ashore and begin an independent life.

Many of the species of these amazing animals are listed on the pages of Krasnaya, and are on the verge of extinction. People put a lot of effort into preserving these species: they create specialized nurseries and reserves.

Many people choose to have pets. Most, of course, prefer cats, dogs, hamsters, parrots, and fish. But there are also those who want to buy something exotic. And there are more and more of them every year. Fortunately, globalization, active development of transport communications and postal services with exotic countries allow you to purchase the most original and unusual family member. We will talk about one of these - the salamander - in our article. Let us note right away: anyone can start it, since caring for it is easy, it is small in size and will not cause much trouble.

Description

To begin with, we invite you to get acquainted with the description of the animal salamander. Contrary to a common misconception, it is not a reptile, it is a tailed amphibian. Therefore, a salamander cannot be called a lizard, because they belong to different classes of animals. Its name is translated from Persian as “fire within.”

This amphibian is small in size - from 10 to 30 cm. In nature, it can be found almost everywhere - in Europe, Asia, America, Africa. Under natural conditions, it lives for about 15 years. And at home, 50-year-old individuals were found, which suggests that these animals tolerate captivity conditions well.

Did you know? The largest salamander in the world is the Chinese giant salamander. It reaches a length of 1.8 m (including tail) and a weight of 70 kg. Lives in Eastern China.

The salamander's body is slender and well streamlined. It is covered with skin that is pleasant to the touch, smooth and moist. Its color depends on the species. It can be nondescript or flashy. The latter is designed to scare away predators.

The salamander's muzzle is somewhat rounded with large eyes, behind which there are glands that secrete a toxic substance. When poison comes into contact with a person’s body, it does not harm him. A slight burning sensation can only be observed upon contact with the mucous membrane of the eye.

The amphibian's limbs are small but strong. The front ones have four toes, the rear ones have five. There are no membranes on them.

IN natural environment habitat, the amphibian is nocturnal - the salamander hunts and walks in the dark. Avoids exposure to direct sunlight and hot temperatures, as it hates these two factors.

It prefers to live in accumulations of stones, forest floor, stumps, old trees, hollows and holes dug by other animals. The amphibian eats small insects, worms, slugs, and other spineless animals.

Kinds

There are over 200 species of salamanders. Below you will find brief description seven of the most famous and suitable for keeping at home.

The fire salamander is the most common amphibian purchased for keeping at home. It can also be found in many places in the wild.
Representatives of this species grow up to 23 cm. They are easily recognized by their eye-catching coloring - a black body with symmetrically located yellow or orange spots. Their body is stocky. The head is round with large expressive eyes. The paws are rather short with the toes spread out at the ends.

The movements of fire salamanders are usually slow. They can be swift only when attacking prey. Amphibians do not show aggression towards humans.

Did you know? The fire salamander has been used by alchemists and sorcerers for centuries to prepare their medicinal potions. Throughout the centuries, salamanders have been credited with miraculous properties, including the ability to extinguish fire..

The Lusitanian or golden-striped variety grows up to 15-16 cm in length. Two thirds of the length of the body is the tail. This amphibian is black in color with two golden stripes on its back and small blue dots. You can meet it in northern Spain and Portugal.
Characteristic feature The unique feature of this amphibian is that it captures prey with its extended tongue, like a frog. This animal is very agile and can even jump, for example, from stone to stone.

The Alpine or black salamander is an inhabitant of mountainous and rocky areas in the Alps, usually at an altitude of 700 m above sea level. It is similar in appearance to the fiery variety, but has a more refined body, shorter length, pure black color and stronger limbs. Adults reach a length of 9-14 cm.

This rare view an amphibian that lives in wooded areas in Georgia and Turkey. Its body is up to 15 cm long. It is quite narrow. The color of this salamander is black or brown with yellow spots throughout the body. Its tail usually exceeds the length of its body.
This amphibian is characterized by fast and sharp movements and good swimming abilities. In movement it resembles a lizard.

The tree species lives in a very limited area - in the forests and mountains of the states of Baja California (Mexico) and California (USA). The body has a length of 7 to 12 cm. Her head is wide. The paws are very strong. The tail is muscular. It helps the amphibian to jump.
The body is colored in light and dark shades of brown. The abdomen is white or gray. This amphibian has 13 to 15 grooves on its sides.

The dwarf salamander is the smallest representative of its family. It grows only 5-9 cm. Two-thirds of this length is in the tail. She has a wide head with large bulging eyes. A characteristic difference from other salamanders is the presence of four fingers on both the front and hind limbs.
Body color is yellow-brown with dark spots located on the back or with stripes on the sides.

This little one is found in the USA.

This species lives in the mountains of Mexico, America and Canada at an altitude of over 2800 m above sea level. Adults grow up to 14-14.5 cm. They have a slender body, a small thick head, a rounded muzzle, and wrinkled skin on the sides. Eyes raised. The tail is very long.
In color, these salamanders can be brown, brown with a red tint and light spots along the back.

When choosing an amphibian, you need to pay attention to the fact that it is moderately well-fed and not obese. If its ribs are visible, then it is better to refuse to buy such an animal.

It is important to pay attention to the salamander's skin. It should be clean, smooth and moist. It needs to be examined for damage and ulcers.

Be sure to look into the animal's eyes. They should look healthy, shiny and without veil.
If you plan to add new ones to the amphibians already living there, then they need to be quarantined for several weeks in order to exclude the presence of diseases.

It is necessary to keep an amphibian at home in a closed terrarium. The container must be closed tightly with a lid. There should be a space of at least 30 square meters per individual. cm. So, for example, to house two or three animals you will need a glass or plastic container measuring 90 x 40 x 30. The best place for a terrarium - as close to the floor as possible, but under no circumstances in the sun or near a radiator.

Important! If you plan to keep a group of salamanders, it is not recommended to keep two males in one aquarium. It is better to place several females and one male.

A prerequisite for the terrarium is the presence of a swimming pool. Its depth should be equal to the length of half the animal’s body. It should accommodate all individuals living in the terrarium.
For soil you need to use a mixture of earth, peat, coal, bark. It needs to be covered on top with moss (sphagnum moss) - the salamander will happily hide in it, just as in its natural habitat. The substrate layer should be approximately 4-12 cm high.

This is what it might look like laying the substrate in the terrarium:

• the lowest layer is pebbles (layer height - 1-1.5 cm);
• middle layer - leaf soil with a slight addition of peat (4-12 cm high);
• the top layer is wet sphagnum moss (2-3 cm high).

You can build stone caves or purchase decorative houses for an aquarium - the animal must have a shelter where it can retire from prying eyes. Living plants, driftwood, stones, and pieces of bark are placed as decorations.

Important! Since in nature salamanders are accustomed to living in the same place, it is advisable to leave all objects in their places when cleaning the terrarium, otherwise the amphibian will feel uncomfortable.

Creating comfortable conditions

The terrarium must be maintained temperature regime at 16-20 degrees during the day and 15-16 degrees at night. The amphibian will feel uncomfortable already when the temperature rises to 22-25 degrees. And if the mark on the thermometer exceeds 25, it will start to hurt. The amphibian tolerates a decrease in temperature well; in winter it will feel great at +5 °C. The animal tolerates temperature changes easily.
For the terrarium, additional lighting must be created in the form of fluorescent lamps - daylight hours for salamanders should consist of 12 hours. The lamps are placed at a certain distance from the animal’s home.

Heating is not required for amphibians. But if you want to install it, it is advisable to be able to regulate it so as not to overheat the animal in the summer. Air humidity is important for salamanders. It needs to be maintained at 70-95%, so you need to equip the terrarium with a hygrometer. To achieve the required parameters, you should spray the soil in the aquarium and the plants daily with a spray bottle. It is especially important to carry out these procedures during molting.

Features of care

• cleaning the terrarium;
• replacing water in the pool;
• feeding;
• treatment in case of health problems.

The water in the pool should be changed at least once every two days. The water must be well settled or filtered.
The terrarium needs to be cleaned once every two to three weeks. The salamander’s “apartment” and all its insides are washed with disinfectants that are safe for amphibians.

Important! You can pick up a salamander, but not often. The toxic substances it secretes can cause an allergic reaction. And any cosmetic product, previously applied to a person’s hands, can cause a burn on the skin of an amphibian. After contact with an animal, you should wash your hands thoroughly.

Nutrition

Before purchasing an exotic animal, you need to research what it eats. And the main thing is to think about whether you can provide it with the treats that it prefers, since, for example, crickets or slugs, so beloved by salamanders, cannot be bought at any pet store or at any pet market.

You need to feed the amphibian the same thing it eats in wildlife, namely:

• woodlice;
• earthworms and mealworms;
• caterpillars;
• grasshoppers;
• bloodworm;
• mice (live one-day old).

Feeding should be done once every two days. You should also worry about purchasing a vitamin-mineral complex at a pet store, which will need to be periodically introduced into the animal’s diet. Having prepared the vitamin solution, it is poured with a syringe into the insect, which is then fed to the amphibian, or the food is simply sprinkled with dry vitamin powder. Vitamins should be given once a week.
You can train a salamander to eat from your hands, but it is better to feed it using special tweezers. Just be careful not to injure the animal. It is best to present the treat at a distance of 1 cm from the animal. Having noticed prey, the amphibian, as a rule, makes a lightning-fast throw. The animal swallows the food whole.

You can also try to teach the amphibian to eat from one specific place, adapting, for example, a small saucer or pebble for this purpose.

You need to offer food until the animal begins to refuse it. Overfeeding the amphibian is not recommended. Fire and tiger amphibians are especially prone to overeating.

After the animal is satisfied, excess food must be removed from the terrarium.

Important! It would be useful for the owner of a pet salamander to know that when it molts, it usually refuses to eat. During this period, she can spend quite a long time without food. This is normal and should not be a cause for concern.

Salamander breeding

Puberty in salamanders occurs at the age of two to four years, usually when they reach a length of 12-14 cm. Mating occurs after wintering. Therefore, if you plan to breed amphibians, then they need to create a wintering area artificially - first lower the temperature to +8...+14 degrees, and then (in April) raise it to +18...+23. Plus, you can place more items in the terrarium where the couple can hide. During wintering, food is not offered to amphibians.
Mating begins in April-May. Salamanders are viviparous animals, so 9-10 months after fertilization, the female will lay larvae in the water. The number of larvae can reach 25-30.

Immediately after birth, the babies will need to be placed in a separate aquarium with mandatory aeration and filtration and maintaining a water temperature of +12-17 degrees. The aquarium must have a dry area. Children need to be fed with corethra, cyclops, daphnia, etc.

After three to five months, the cubs will reach a size of 5 cm and will be able to go onto land.

Health and characteristic diseases

Diseases characteristic of tailed amphibians:

The amphibian falls into a state of torpor in winter, as well as during bad weather.
The salamander is an excellent exotic pet. Having such a miracle in your home, you will definitely not be bored, because observing the behavior of an exotic animal brings great pleasure. The amphibian feels great in captivity, does not require special care and does not cause any problems in the form of noise, dirt or other discomfort. It can be started by a beginner. You can purchase a salamander for between $15 and $40.