Giant salamander message. Giant salamander (gigantic): description, dimensions
June 14th, 2009
The giant salamander (giant salamander) is a genus of tailed amphibians of the cryptobranch family and is represented by two species: the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus) and the Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus), which differ in the location of the tubercles on the head and their habitat. True to its name, the Chinese giant salamander lives in the mountain rivers of the central part of Eastern China, and the Japanese giant salamander lives in the rivers of Japan.
Today, it is the largest amphibian, which can reach 160 cm in length, weigh up to 180 kg and can live up to 150 years, although the officially recorded maximum age of the giant salamander is 55 years.
This unique amphibian lived alongside dinosaurs millions of years ago and managed to survive and adapt to new living conditions. The gigantic salamander leads an aquatic lifestyle, is active at dusk and at night, prefers cold, fast-flowing mountain streams and rivers, damp caves and underground rivers.
The dark brown coloring with darker blurry spots makes the salamander invisible against the background of rocky river bottoms. The body and large head of the salamander are flattened, the tail, which makes up almost half of the entire length, is paddle-shaped, the front legs have 4 fingers and the hind legs have 5 fingers, the eyes without eyelids are set wide apart, and the nostrils are very close together.
The salamander has poor eyesight, which is compensated by an excellent sense of smell, with which it finds frogs, fish, crustaceans, and insects, slowly moving along the river bottom. The salamander obtains food by hiding at the bottom of the river, with a sharp lunge of its head it captures and holds the victim with its jaws with small teeth. The salamander's metabolism is slow, which allows it to go without food for a long time.
In August-September, salamanders begin their breeding season. The female lays several hundred eggs, 6-7 mm in size, resembling long rosaries, in horizontal burrows under water at a depth of 3 meters, which is absolutely not typical for amphibians. Caviar matures in 60-70 days at a water temperature of 12 °C. In this case, as a rule, the male constantly provides aeration of the eggs, creating a flow of water with his tail. The larvae are about 30 mm long, have three pairs of external gills, limb buds and a long tail with a wide fin fold. Small salamanders are constantly in the water for up to a year and a half, until their lungs are finally formed and they can go to land. But the salamander can also breathe through its skin. At the same time, the giant salamander reaches sexual maturity.
The meat of the gigantic salamander is quite tasty and edible, which has led to a reduction in the animal’s population and its inclusion in the Red Book as a species in danger of extinction. Thus, currently in Japan, the salamander is practically not found in nature, but is bred in special nurseries.
Unusual animals always attract attention. The Japanese giant or giant salamander was no exception.
What does a giant salamander look like?
A fairly large amphibian, the length of which most often reaches one and a half meters. The weight of an adult salamander can reach up to 27 kilograms. The tail is long and wide, the paws are thick and short. The front paws have four toes and the hind paws have five. The Japanese giant salamander is completely covered in dark skin that appears wrinkled and has small wart-like growths. Thanks to these growths, the area of the skin increases, which is the salamander’s “nose”, because it breathes through the skin. Of course, there are lungs, but they are not involved in the breathing process, as they are rudimentary. The small eyes of the salamander are not distinguished by vigilance; its vision is extremely poorly developed. The giant salamander also differs from its other relatives in that it has gill openings.
Habitat of the Japanese giant salamander
The Japanese giant salamander is so called because it lives exclusively in Japan, and more precisely, in the north of the island of Kyushu and the west of Honshu, in cold, mountain streams, which it rarely leaves.
The Japanese salamander is a unique amphibian that breathes entirely through its skin.
Lifestyle of a gigantic salamander
During the day, the salamander prefers to sleep sweetly in some secluded place; all its activity occurs at dusk and at night. It moves along the bottom on its paws, doing it slowly, unlike those more familiar to us. If it needs to speed up, the giant salamander connects its tail to its paws. Always move against the flow, this helps improve the breathing process. Sometimes smaller individuals can be crushed by their larger counterparts. As a warning, the salamander secretes a pungent-smelling secretion that turns gelatinous when exposed to air.
Even though the Japanese salamander may not eat for several weeks due to its slow metabolism, it still hunts frequently. The salamander is carnivorous. She does not have saliva - she does not need it, because the process of eating prey occurs under water. The salamander opens its mouth sharply and widely, and literally sucks in the victim along with the water. Prefers fish, small amphibians, crustaceans and some insects.
Reproduction and offspring of the giant salamander
At the beginning of autumn, giant salamanders gather in nesting areas. These are usually underwater pits or rocky caves. Males are very aggressive and actively fight for space. Females lay their eggs directly in the depressions, after which the male fertilizes them. In these individuals, the male takes care of the offspring. It protects the eggs from predators and its aggressive relatives until all the little salamanders hatch. Like any other amphibian, the salamander goes through three stages of growth: first the egg, then the larva, which then grows into an adult. Throughout their lives, salamanders increase in size. It has not yet been established precisely at what age they reach sexual maturity, but, obviously, this occurs when they reach a large size.
Enemies of the Japanese salamander
Quite successfully camouflaged, the Japanese giant salamander easily hides from its enemies. But she does not always manage to hide from the most important thing, from the person. Giant salamanders are interesting to people not only as meat. Some of their body parts are successfully used in alternative medicine.
GIANT SALAMANDER (Andrias), a genus of tailed amphibians of the cryptobranch family, includes two species:
Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus)
Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus)
These are tailed amphibians of the cryptobranch family.
The Japanese giant salamander and the Chinese giant salamander differ in the location of the tubercles on the head and their habitat.
Today it is the largest amphibian.
It reaches 160 cm in length, weighs up to 180 kg and can live up to 150 years.
But we met them only when they were under 55 years old.
Dark brown with dark blurry spots. With this coloration, the salamander is invisible against the background of rocky river bottoms.
The body and large head are flattened, the tail is almost half of the entire length,
looks like an oar-shaped oar.
The front paws have 4 toes, and the hind paws have 5 toes. And the paws are short and thick
The eyes have no eyelids and are set wide apart, while the nostrils, on the contrary, are very close together.
The skin is soft, warty, forms longitudinal folds on the sides of the body; the same folds border the posterior edges of the legs. The giant salamander absorbs oxygen through its skin. Having folds of skin on the sides of the body serves to increase the surface area of the body, which helps absorb even more oxygen.
Salamanders have poor eyesight.
Leads an aquatic lifestyle, active at dusk and at night, prefers cold, fast-flowing mountain streams and rivers with fast currents, damp caves and underground rivers.
Spends the day under washed-out shores or large rocks in the western part of the island of Honshu (north of Gifu Prefecture) and on the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu (Oita Prefecture), choosing altitudes from 300 to 1000 m above sea level.
Adults tolerate low temperatures relatively well.
For example, a case is described when a gigantic salamander calmly survived the drop in water temperature to zero in January 1838.
In the aquarium of the Moscow Zoo, during cold nights, even a crust of ice appeared on the water surface.
The salamander has poor eyesight, which is compensated by an excellent sense of smell, with which it finds frogs, fish, crustaceans, and insects, slowly moving along the river bottom.
The salamander obtains food by hiding at the bottom of the river, with a sharp lunge of its head it captures and holds the victim with its jaws with small teeth.
The gigantic salamander can both seek out prey, navigating with the help of smell,
and lie in wait for her
The salamander's metabolism is slow, which allows it to go without food for a long time.
Salamanders have a slow metabolism; they can go without food for weeks. It feeds on fish and small amphibians, crustaceans and insects.
It is also capable of long-term fasting - there are known cases when salamanders in captivity did not feed for two months without visible harm to themselves, and grab with a sharp movement of the head to the side. In captivity, cases of cannibalism (eating their own kind) have been reported.
Japanese giant salamanders begin breeding at the end of August, when they gather in small groups near their nests. Males are very aggressive towards their opponents, and often many die later due to injuries received in mating fights.
The female lays several hundred eggs, 6-7 mm in size, resembling long rosaries, in horizontal burrows under water at a depth of 3 meters, which is absolutely not typical for amphibians.
To moisten the clutch, the eggs are constantly lubricated with mucus, and one of the parents (usually the male) has to fan them with his tail, providing a continuous flow of fresh air.
Caviar matures in 60-70 days at a water temperature of 12 °C. . The larvae are about 30 mm long, have three pairs of external gills, limb buds and a long tail with a wide fin fold.
Small salamanders are constantly in the water for up to a year and a half, until their lungs are finally formed and they can go to land. But the salamander can also breathe through its skin. At the same time, the giant salamander reaches sexual maturity.
Although giant salamanders have no natural enemies, their numbers are declining as a result of local populations hunting them as food and the loss of their habitat due to deforestation.
The meat of the gigantic salamander is quite tasty and edible, which has led to a reduction in the animal’s population. Thus, currently in Japan, the salamander is practically not found in nature, but is bred in special nurseries.
At the beginning and middle of the last century, in the markets of the cities of Osako and Kyoto, local residents sold medium-sized salamanders for 12 - 24 guilders.
At the same time, Chinese and Japanese doctors advised the use of boiled meat and broth from giant salamanders as an anti-infective agent in the treatment of consumption and diseases of the digestive system.
However, due to the rarity of the animal, even then “medicines” from it cost a lot of money. As a result of overfishing, giant salamanders are now under protection: they are included in the Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and in Appendix II of the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITEC). The catch of the Japanese salamander from nature is extremely limited, although it is quite successfully bred on Japanese farms.
This unique amphibian lived alongside dinosaurs millions of years ago and managed to survive and adapt to new living conditions.
The species was first described and cataloged in the 1820s, when one of the salamanders was captured by the German naturalist Philipp Franz von Siebold, then working in Japan and living on the island of Dejima in Nagasaki Prefecture.
He sent the captured salamander to the city of Leiden (Netherlands).
Probably, the extinct species of giant salamander (Andrias scheuchzeri or Salamandra scheuchzeri), described in the 18th century from Miocene deposits of Germany, belongs to the same species.
The size and appearance of the skeleton of a gigantic salamander from the Miocene deposits of Germany so struck the imagination of the Viennese physician A. Scheichzer that in 1724 he described it as Homo diluvitestis (“man - witness of the global flood”), apparently deciding that the skeletal materials were all that left from the biblical hero who failed to escape on Noah's ark.
Only Georges Cuvier, the famous zoologist at the turn of the XYII and XYIII centuries, classified this “man” as an amphibian.
The first gigantic salamanders appeared in European aquariums in the middle of the 18th century.
One of them was brought to Kharkov from a trip around the world on the ship "Gaydamak" in 1877 by the ship's doctor P. N. Savchenko. While the animal was still alive, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences agreed to purchase this individual for 300 rubles after its death.
The gigantic salamanders first came to Moscow at the request of the famous domestic zoologist, director of the Moscow State University Zoo Museum A. P. Bogdanov, for whom the Russian envoy to the Japanese court and minister plenipotentiary K. V. Struve organized the delivery of two copies in 1886.
One of them lived in the Moscow Zoo, and the other, who died on the way from Japan to St. Petersburg on the cruiser "Europe", was brought to the Moscow State University Zoo Museum and is now on display.
The Japanese giant salamander, or Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus) is a species of animal from the order of caudate amphibians, one of the largest salamanders in the world. It is endemic to the northern region of Kyushu Island and western Honshu Island in Japan.
These salamanders live in and around cold, fast, mountain streams of water at altitudes of 180 to 1350 meters. The species will grow to approximately 1.5 meters in length and can weigh up to 25 kg. Their long body is covered with wrinkled gray, black and green epidermis, which provides camouflage. The tail is long and wide.
The Japanese giant salamander is endowed with minimal vision. Small eyes are located on top of the wide, flat head. Gas exchange occurs through the epidermis. Its slow metabolism allows this amphibian to live without consuming food for several weeks. It is a carnivore that eats fish, small amphibians, crustaceans and insects. These salamanders differ from other closely related species in that they do not have gill openings.
Throughout its life, the giant salamander continuously grows. Like other amphibians, they go through three stages of development, including eggs, larvae and adults. Hatching occurs 12 to 15 weeks after fertilization. The eggs are usually 4-6 mm in diameter, and are mostly yellow in color.
The reproductive process occurs in early autumn. In late August, salamanders gather in nesting or spawning pits, which simply consist of rock caves, burrows or hollowed-out depressions within a sandy riverbed, where one female lays 500-600 eggs at a time. Males compete aggressively to occupy these spawning holes and then guard the eggs from other males and possible predators such as fish.
During such periods of struggle, many young males die, whom the winners often not only kill, but also eat. The males fiercely defend and occupy a particular spawning hole for many years. Due to the large number of offspring produced each season, early life mortality is high. However, Japanese giant salamanders can live for over fifty years.
This amphibian is nocturnal and usually sleeps during the day. She is very mobile and waterfowl. Because of its small eyes, the Japanese giant salamander relies more on smell and touch to sense its environment. Little is known about their communication methods. Clearly, tactile communication between rival males and between male and female during breeding is important.
Bony fish are the main natural enemies of this salamander species. And also people who use their meat for food. It is considered a real delicacy. Japan even practices breeding these amphibians on farms.
On the IUCN Red List the species is classified as Near Threatened.
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Japan is home to unusual huge creatures, which are the largest tailed amphibians in the world. The giant salamander comes in two subspecies (Chinese and Japanese), which are very similar to each other and can mate freely with each other. Both species are listed in the International Red Book and are currently on the verge of complete extinction, therefore they are strictly protected by various international organizations.
Appearance
The giant one doesn’t look particularly attractive. Its description says that it has a body completely covered with mucus and a large head, which is flattened on top. Its long tail, on the contrary, is laterally compressed, and its legs are short and thick. The nostrils located at the end of the muzzle are too close together. The eyes are somewhat beady and lack eyelids.
The giant salamander has warty skin with fringes on the sides, making the outlines of the animal appear even more blurry. The upper part of the amphibian's body is dark brown in color with grayish streaks and black shapeless spots. This discreet color allows it to be completely invisible at the bottom of the reservoir, as it camouflages the animal well among various objects of the underwater world.
This amphibian is simply amazing with its size. The length of its body including its tail can reach 165 centimeters, and its weight can reach 26 kilograms. She has great physical strength and can be dangerous if she senses an enemy approaching.
Where does he live?
The Japanese species of these animals inhabits the western part of Hondo Island, and is also common in the north of Gifu. In addition, it lives throughout the island. Shikoku and O. Kyushu. The Chinese giant salamander lives in the south of Guangxi province and Shaanxi.
The habitat for these are mountain rivers and streams with clean and cool water, located at an altitude of about five hundred meters.
Lifestyle and behavior
These animals are active exclusively in the dark, and during the day they sleep in some secluded places. At dusk they go out hunting. They usually choose a variety of insects, small amphibians, fish and crustaceans as their food.
They move along the bottom with the help of their short paws, but if there is a need for sharp acceleration, then they also connect the tail. The giant salamander usually moves against the current, as this can allow for better breathing. It emerges from the water onto the shore in very rare cases and mainly after spills caused by heavy rains. The animal spends a lot of its time in various burrows, large recesses formed among underwater rocks, or in tree trunks and snags that have sunk and ended up at the bottom of the river.
The Japanese salamander, as well as the Chinese one, have poor eyesight, but this does not prevent them from adapting remarkably well and orienting themselves in space, since they are endowed by nature with a wonderful sense of smell.
Molting of these amphibians occurs several times a year. The old loose skin completely slides off the entire surface of the body. The small shreds and flakes produced in this process may be partially eaten by the animal. During this period, which lasts several days, they make frequent movements reminiscent of vibration. In this way, amphibians wash off all remaining areas of shed skin.
The giant salamander is considered a territorial amphibian, so it is not uncommon for small males to be destroyed by their larger counterparts. But, in principle, these animals are not overly aggressive and only in case of danger can they secrete a sticky secretion that has a milky color and somewhat resembles the smell of Japanese pepper.
Reproduction
This animal usually mates between August and September, after which the female lays her eggs in a dug hole under the shore at a depth of three meters. These eggs have a diameter of approximately 7 mm, and there are several hundred of them. They ripen in about sixty days at a water temperature of twelve degrees Celsius.
Having just emerged, the larvae are only 30 mm long, have the rudiments of limbs and a large tail. These amphibians do not come onto land until they reach the age of one and a half years, when their lungs are already fully formed and they reach sexual maturity. Until this time, the giant salamander is constantly under water.
Nutrition
Metabolic processes in the body of these tailed amphibians proceed very slowly, so they can go without any food for many days and are capable of prolonged fasting. When the need for food arises, they go out hunting and catch their prey in one sharp movement with their mouths wide open, resulting in a pressure difference effect. Thus, the victim is safely directed into the stomach along with the flow of water.
Giant salamanders are considered carnivores. In captivity, there were even cases of cannibalism, that is, eating their own kind.
This rare amphibian has very tasty meat, which is considered a real delicacy. The giant salamander is also widely used in folk medicine. Interesting facts about this animal indicate that drugs made from it can prevent diseases of the digestive tract, treat consumption, and also help with bruises and various blood diseases. Therefore, this creature, which survived the dinosaurs and adapted to all changes in life and climatic conditions on Earth, is currently on the verge of extinction due to human intervention.
Nowadays, this species of tailed amphibians is under strict supervision and is bred on farms. But creating a natural habitat for these animals is extremely difficult. Therefore, deep-water flowing channels were built especially for them in nurseries designed for this purpose. However, in captivity, unfortunately, they do not grow so large.