Alternative Name
Yellow Spotted Salamander
Scientific Name: Ambystoma maculatum
Basic Info
The Yellow Spotted Salamander will reach a size of 6 to 8 inches at maturity.The Yellow Spotted Salamander typically has about 24 to 45 large yellow spots on its dorsal side, though on rare occasions individuals completely lack spots. These spots are on top of a dark blue to black base color. Their body has a stout shape, and they have a dipped and rounded snout. Their legs are large and strong, and may have four or five toes.
Health
The Yellow Spotted Salamander can be fed insects. They should be kept at mild temperatures and light humidity. Yellow Spotted Salamanders should have access to a good-sized water pool that they can easily get into and out of.
Breeding
Yellow Spotted Salamanders begin to breed in the springtime. They follow the streams of melting snow to breeding pools. The male will arrive sooner than the female, and there will be an overabundance of males, who will compete by swimming around and rubbing each other. Males will deposit spermatophores, which will be picked up by the female's cloaca. Females will lay egg masses on submerged objects. The average number of eggs in the milky white mass is 125. The eggs will hatch in 31 to 54 days. The larvae will transform in 61 to 110 days.
Habitat
The salamanders actually were living in the logs that the men would burn.
Behavior
The Yellow Spotted Salamander is a favorite pet of many. It is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful salamanders. In addition to being valued for their beauty, the Yellow Spotted Salamander is prized for their diet of pesky insects.
The Yellow Spotted Salamander spends most of its day underground, only to come out at night and hunt for food. They are amphibious, but they spend most of their time on land, using water only for breeding. Yellow Spotted Salamander dig homes into the ground, so their habitat must have a very deep layer of compacted soil. Their habitat should also be large with plenty of plants and branches.
Origin
North America
History
The Yellow Spotted Salamander can be found throughout North America, from Texas to Nova Scotia. The name salamander means "live in fire". Back in medieval times, people observed salamanders walking out of fires.
Common Foods
feeds primarily on insects, earthworms, small rodents, small animals.
Latest news about Salamander Spotted
Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve
As national parks go, Great Sand Dunes may be underrated. We had put it on our itinerary as a side trip from the drive across southern Colorado, figuring that it would be one of those parks that has one predominant feature and not much else. After all, it’s just a bunch of big piles of sand, right? Turns out there’s a lot more here than that. Yes, there are enormous sand dunes, up to 750 feet tall, in a huge field just a short hike from the campground. But being bordered by both desert and the Continue reading
389 - Earth's Tree News
--Today for you 33 new articles about earth’s trees! (389th edition) --You can now RSS tree news in a regional format at: http://forestpolicyresearch.org --To Subscribe / unsubscribe to the world-wide email format send a blank email to: earthtreenews-subscribe@lists.riseup.net OR earthtreenews-unsubscribe@lists.riseup In this Issue: EU-Africa-Mid-East Asia-Pacifc-Australia World-wide Index: --UK: 1) Snuff Mills Action Group uses an assessment called ‘Capital Asset Value’ --Scotland: 2) Continue reading
Between Dawn and Dusk
Between Dawn and Dusk Last week, Frank, his older son Francis and I spent a few days up at their cottage. The weather was what Frank would refer to as good fishing days - mostly overcast and often rainy. The cloudy skies did occasionally yield to the sun in short-to-moderate bursts, often at the times of day that I like the best - when it begins its ascent or descent in the sky. Most mornings were dull, and often rainy, so I was in the habit of sleeping right through the days' dawning. A la Continue reading
Empty
I stand at the edge of Little Pond pool, its green, grassy basin rimmed with field flowers reaching beyond my waist. It was in this very spot that I found him last spring, my first spotted salamander, climbing over the berm to re-enter the water of his birth, and the study of my vernal pool began.The emptiness seems a loss now, for the thousands of lives that gathered here or hatched from the egg masses, have gone. Most, moving out into the fields and woods on newly sprouted legs. The last remai Continue reading
Pretty little airhead
That Konnie Huq, what an ungrateful bitch. After all we’ve done for her - letting her stay in the country she was born in, allowing her to show her not-white face on television and letting her earn a degree from Cambridge at the Taxpayer’s expense what does she turn around and say? What do you avoid on holiday? English pubs or restaurants that serve British food, and rowdy British holidaymakers. Treacherous Konnie Huq, far away from my respect For poor Anthony Richardson, as spotted by Mike Continue reading
Democrats Giving Republicans The Oil Issue
By not allowing either house of congress to vote on whether or not to drill shale or drill in forbidden parts of the US, including offshore in Florida, the Gulf and California, not to mention ANWR being sacred ground, the Democrats have allowed the Republicans to have an issue to bring before the electorate that is a big pocketbook issue. Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow a vote in the House, and Harry Reid is playing games and getting rude as he gets frustrated over bringing a real energy bill to Continue reading
Telegraph Fire Burns 25 Homes Near Yosemite
Updated 6:10 AM July 30. It is 58 degrees in Madera. 13 new properties have been added to the list of properties rumored damaged. The new damaged properties are on West Whitlock, Sherlock, Mt. Bullion and Morrissey Roads. Two new names were added to the list of confirmed burned. One more name was added to the list of confirmed saved. See below for details. I'm going to do something I don't usually do here. I will let readers call me if they want the most up to date details on the fire, or for a Continue reading
things that crawl and slither…
Herpetology is the branch of zoology dealing with reptiles and amphibians. Interestingly, the Greek origin of the word derives from “a creeping thing.” With the expert help of herpetologist Jim White from the Delaware Nature Society I was able to get close to lots of cold-blooded creeping, crawling and slithering critters who live all around us but we seldom get to see. Jim is writing an essay for Wild Delaware that will shed some light on things that live in the shadows of our woodlands and we Continue reading
The Morning Scramble - 7/22/2008
The Morning Scramble - 7/22/2008 Posted by steveegg on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 12:16:39 PM Today’s music is suggested by Peter (specifically, the bottom-of-the-deck reference). Before we get there, however, a little inside baseball. I’m laughing at the “superior intellect” of the Leftosphere as Rick Esenberg destroys it… Let’s start out with some highlights of other oh-so-tolerant lieberals and their ideas of speech - Doubleplusundead caught some anti-war types spitting at veterans. S Continue reading
Critter Friends
With Thanks to Heraldo for the memories. My Grandson used to love to collect these, they are called Black Spotted Salamanders, and they are black with varying degrees of spots from coal black to Dalmatian colored. You can find them under bark and rocks laying on the ground, in the woods in the winter. They secrete poison, but they are safe to handle if you wash your hands and don't ingest any of the poison. There is the old wives tale of the high school kid that ate one on a dare at a party and Continue reading
The Morning Scramble - 7/22/2008
Today’s music is suggested by Peter (specifically, the bottom-of-the-deck reference). Before we get there, however, a little inside baseball. I’m laughing at the “superior intellect” of the Leftosphere as Rick Esenberg destroys it… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW2heKjzjIA Let’s start out with some highlights of other oh-so-tolerant lieberals and their ideas of speech - Doubleplusundead caught some anti-war types spitting at veterans. Several others in my feed reader also caught this, b Continue reading
Opal Creek Ancient Forest
Another thing off my squeeze-summer-into-a-few-days list: a hike at Opal Creek! My sister Emily is in town for just a few days, and since she's usually here at Christmas and only ever sees Oregon in the gloom, my parents and I took her out to the woods. (Poor Jim stayed home to draw some role-playing game cards he's working on for White Wolf). I've been wanting to go to Opal Creek ever since I read about it in Audubon Magazine at the doctor's office (and stole the magazine, I confess). It's a tr Continue reading
Opal Creek Ancient Forest
Another thing off my squeeze-summer-into-a-few-days list: a hike at Opal Creek! My sister Emily is in town for just a few days, and since she's usually here at Christmas and only ever sees Oregon in the gloom, my parents and I took her out to the woods. (Poor Jim stayed home to draw some role-playing game cards he's working on for White Wolf). I've been wanting to go to Opal Creek ever since I read about it in Audubon Magazine at the doctor's office (and stole the magazine, I confess). It's a tr Continue reading
Imagination On The Trails
Have you read The Salamander Room? One of my son’s favorite books, this is a beautifully illustrated, imaginative story about a boy who wishes to turn his bedroom into a forest habitat so that he can bring home a salamander. On a recent hike in the Clarksville Cave Preserve, we imagined that we were in this salamander room. Arriving at the preserve after a torrential downpour, we were just in time to be greeted by dozens of Red-Spotted Newts, a type of salamander that we also find on the m Continue reading
Pray to God ...
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THREE CHEERS FOR CHIROPTERA part ii
The same factors that keep the average schlemiel oblivious to the bats around him make it difficult for the odd interested party to study and understand them; they live in a world to which we are deaf and dumb. Before night vision goggles could amplify ambient light and bat detectors convert ultrasonic calls to audible frequencies, bat researchers were relegated to observing their subjects leaving or returning to their roosts and collecting droppings and food waste below. The data collected were Continue reading
Ventilation, Part 4 (fictionalized history)
Part 1.) Julia wanted to claw. To pull everything off of her. The back hallway glowed with sour light. She heard a curtain close, but couldn't see it. Something propped her head toward the water-stained ceiling. She fought for air with a thousand pounds on her chest. Whatever it was, she screamed for them to take the weight off. But couldn't scream. Each breath fell short. Like slipping. Slipping. Slipping down a mountain. Below, she sensed a black, tingling bot Continue reading
newt crossing
at this time of year it's common to see these eastern spotted newts on the move around here. in nearby amherst, it's spotted salamanders that are hitting the road. so many, in fact, that in 1987 the town built a special salamander crossing beneath the roadway to protect them on their journey, which later inspired both a band name and a craft-brewed beer. hopefully this little guy, who i spotted while walking tonight, arrived safely. Continue reading
Movin’ On Up, and That’s Very Bad
by Erik Baard Global warming is forcing the upward migration of reptiles and amphibians to cooler altitudes, according to an American Museum of Natural History researcher. While much has rightfully been made of the world’s visibly melting alpine glaciers, a desperate and quiet migration has been occurring, with creatures scaling slopes to escape the heat at the bottom of the mountains. The alarm is sounded from Madagascar, where the AMNH Associate Curator of Herpetology Christoph Continue reading
What do the books know?
On the way back from camp I missed a turn off. We were only a mile or so passed our exit when we startled two large birds out of a bush. I thought perhaps they were Golden Eagles, having seen one once before in Colorado. I wasn't sure though, and when we got home I pulled out the old bird identification guide. The picture certainly matched, however according to the guide book Golden Eagles are not common in the area where we spotted them. I handed the book to Salamander. "Find the birds we sa Continue reading
