Category: Amphibians
This enigmatic species is arguably the best known salamander species in Europe. It is black with varying proportions of bright yellow stripes and/or spots (and sometimes shades of red and orange). They can be very long lived – one specimen kept in a German natural history museum lived to be more than 50 years old! They prefer to live in deciduous forests, where they can hide in fallen leaves and lurk near mossy tree trunks.
Learn more about the Fire Salamander at Wikipedia and Reptiles Magazine.
Only a Mother’s Love…
We are taught that toads leave their fertilized eggs in the water in long strings, which hatch into tadpoles, who live in the water until they grow legs and lungs and become toads. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, there always has to be an exception to the rule: the male Suriname toad implants eggs into the female’s back, which sink into her skin and forms pockets where the eggs eventually hatch into tadpoles. These tadpoles live on their mother’s back until transforming into toads, at which point they burrow out of her skin in a fascinating or horrifying (or both) display, depending on your perspective.
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Discover Animals is a web-based educational resource offered by the NAIA
