Show ABOUT salamanders SAL AMANDERS origin orien or of the belief that they ar aro at homo in fira so some runy runny facea concerning Concern lne the labu l abu loir IOUs creatures Creat by IL a man ahu is ii Vani familiar lilar with the or nobody knows how the supers superstition titio n regard regarding ing the supposed f fireproof ity of the salamander had its rise said dr the reptilian expert of the smithsonian institution to the washington evening star recently however I 1 can give what I 1 think thin is a pretty good guess a at t it to explain I 1 shall have to tell you a story once upon a time I 1 was camping ou out t with a party hunting and fishing we had lighted a big fire e using for fuel several old logs while we were sitting around watching the progress of some cooker cookery y in which we were ave engaged a young lady at my side gave a little scream and pointed into the flames I 1 looked and there was a small lizard crawle crawling ng right out from among the glowing embers it walled walked away unhurt apparently through the grass and made its es escape c ape now that si salamander lamander had occupied a hole in one of the logs used fo for r fuel several species of its kind live in old tree trunks doubtless this one found that it was getting uncomfortably hot and crawled out being moist and slimy its body was protected from injury by the fire long enough to enable it to esca escape p e through the embers but the sight of the animal deliberately making its appearance from the midst of the fireway fir ewas certainly very surprising any ignorant person might easily shave have been led to imagine that the creature must be fireproof it seems to me quite probable that the superstition took its rise from just such occurrences there are so many species of sala fala m manders anders that a description of them all would fill a book they are to be found all over the world except in very colare cold regions ions Ins in a popular sense name salamander is applied to all i batrachians ns with tails that is rather a loose joose definition A tadpole is a with a tall but it is not a salamander the great majority of bf sal amanders are small email such as aa the newts found in springs the biggest species in this country is the so called mud eel or siren it has only two feet just behind the head and it has external gills when fully folly developed which is an exception to the rule among sal amanders the biggest salamander in the world is found in japan it attains a length of two feet and is related to the hellbender 1 most sal amanders live on insects but the very large kinds eat pretty nearly everything as a rule for instance the japanese species is omnivorous so faras far as I 1 am aware none of the sal amanders is considered good to eat by civilized men at all events two years ago I 1 obtained a specimen of 0 the only known species of blind salamander it came from a cave in missouri A so called blind salamander exists in certain eaves caves of austria but it is not a true salamander though it would come under the popular definition being with 1 a tail one peculiar thing about sala manders is that they are not as large when full grown as when they are partly developed that seems a funny paradox does it not you see sala manders go through a metamorphosis during their lifetime as frogs do though the change is not so marked they have a larval period as the tadpole is the larv ot ol the frog on becoming adult they shrink up considerably during the larval period they have gills like a fish which usually become rudimentary an odd exception to this rule is the axolotl of 31 mexico exico which does not undergo any such euch metamorphosis and never becomes adult in a scientific sense in other words it never reaches what is the final stage with other sal amanders but bat always remains a larva of different species are found in various parts of the united states but they do undergo the change and become adult however if you keep one ot of them in water and prevent it from escaping it will remain a larva always and will undergo no metamorphosis in order to change it has to get on dry land having become a land animal its external gills disappear being no longer required fr for breathing in water the mexican axolotl never goes on land at any rate not for a longer time than its gills will remain wet |