Amphibians

While cleaning leaves out of my garden beds, I uncovered Dotty, the little gal shown below. Fortunately, I didn't accidentally scoop her up and toss her in my compost bag.

I didn't want to disturb Dotty further by moving the sticks and leaves to get a better view. You can click to enlarge the photos, but the quality isn't great. By the time I returned with my DSLR, Dotty had vanished into her subterranean home, so these phone pics must do.

Turns out my new-found critter is a Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum). While the Spotted Salamander is common on North America’s East Coast, it's also among the most elusive amphibians.

Why doesn’t anyone spot these particular salamanders? Well, they are nocturnal creatures and spend much time underground, where they can avoid predators. They do so quite successfully considering Dotty's kind has an average lifespan of 20 to 30 years and her lineage can be traced way back to the Jurassic Period.

A Jurassic connection, hmmm, perhaps that explains why Dotty's stubby snout and pronounced eyes instantly brought to mind a wingless night-fury (think Toothless, the animated dragon in DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon).

Dotty's skin is similar to the texture of a moist, peeled hard-boiled egg. She must keep her skin slick; beyond breathing through her mouth, Dotty can let extra oxygen enter her body through her skin (carbon dioxide can escape the same way). This process, called valerian respiration, is another way Dotty the amphibian differs from reptilian lizards with their dry, scaly coverings.

Like other salamanders, her body helps her escape peril during a predator attack. Dotty could drop her tail and re-grow another one later. Even if a predator managed to bite off one of Dotty's legs, she could could dash away and grow a new limb or even a heart or other organs, all without the aid of Harry Potter's Skele-Gro potion. 

If that isn't wild enough for you, salamanders are amphibians, so they begin life as aquatic animals. After a month or so, they hatch from eggs as larvae and within a few months attain their adult length (13-25 cm). Depending on the type of salamander, they’ll spend several months to a year in the larval stage, in which salamanders live an entirely aquatic life, relying on silly-looking external gills to survive.

Then, hormones rage and their home ponds start to dry up, which triggers the larvae to transform into juvenile, land-based salamanders. As the aquatic salamanders metamorphose, PRESTO, their external gill slits seal up, the tadpole-like fins vanish by melding back into the body, skin thickens and their internal physiology changes (e.g., circulation, lungs).

Within several years, the juveniles become reproductive adults like Dotty, who return temporarily to their birthplace to mate and lay eggs in the water. If you used time-lapse photography to marvel at this entire metamorphosis, it would be like fast forwarding evolution. Now that's

      AWESOME!!!

Visit Wikipedia to see an exceptional photo of a Spotted Salamander.

Apart from toads and frogs, the only other amphibian I've ever seen in the wild is an Eastern Newt. I was birding quietly by the banks of the "moat" surrounding my old home, when a newt swam by me. It was impossible to miss and I was just as excited then as I was this past weekend when I spotted Dotty, the “mini-dragon” under my leaf litter.