Thursday 31 March 2016

FULLY DEVELOPED PYRENEAN FIRE SALAMANDER BIRTH

It would appear that an opinion I had regarding the large form of Pyrenean Fire Salamanders from several years ago is wrong.

Several of the Salamandra genus give birth to fully formed baby salamanders (i.e. minus gills and terrestrial). But these are all smaller species of Salamandra atra, Salamandra atra aurorae, Salamandra bernardezi, Salamandra alfredschimdti, Salamandra lanzai and an undescribed one, as far as I know, from Northern Morroco, Ceuta, otherwise described as Salamandra algira.

I should point out that I am aware of at least four, seem to recall a fifth, different Fire Salamanders from North Africa from one small one with yellow like bernardezi like qualities, a very nice largely cherry red and yellow large form from the Atlas mountains of Morroco, an almost completely black one I have seen and a rather long and gangley one from near Algeria.

I had not known of a larger type of Salamandra salamandra to produce fully formed young ... until now with my Salamandra salamandra fastuosa. I should now point out that there are two very different forms of fastuosa. Both have continuous bands running from the head to the tails. One smaller with uniform bands and one much bigger and with yellow spots and markings breaking up the black bands. The yellow bands are normally wider than the smaller form too.

I have always noted that in these forms the yellow is always noticeably greater in width in the males than the females.

Well after checking my terrarium for more larvae something was spotted on my peripheral vision and I thought "well if I did not know better I would have sworn that was a young salamander!" only when I shifted and looked down ... it was! Lol.

So I managed to find five of them, though one was still-born, and exposed one pair of the adults with the female looking particularly bulbous!

Here is a video ..


Saturday 26 March 2016

BIRTH OF PYRENEAN FIRE SALAMANDERS (Salamandra salamandra fastusoa) LARGE FORM

Well I seem to be getting things done without actually focusing on them!

In my terrarium I noticed a male putting in a daytime showing, a little odd unless they are ... amorous, and then a females tail dangling over the edge of the pond area.

The ferns, particularly the Maidenhair Fern, was a little overgrown and I could only see a small part of the actual body of water. Still I looked through the small gap anyway and as I peered carefully I thought I could make out the outline of a very small head submerged in the water. As I was looking intently to see if this might be what I thought it was I noticed a banana like shape that had four structures at either and and thought 'they are legs! I am sure of it!' and due to the angle not belonging to the head shape I first spotted.

So I decided to go in and have a look but then thought about setting up the camera on a tripod, to get a video of me guessing and then pulling out any salamander larvae, or tadpoles.

Sure enough I was correct in my assumptions and the video got uploaded, now I am uploading other videos on me getting into vaping! Yes I went from cigarettes to vaping recently and am quite hooked on all the technology available, as you will se in the next two posts, lol.

Anyway here are just two videos of a male Pyrenean (or Lourdes) Fire Salamander and then the one of my netting out some babies with their feathery gills, think tiny Axolotls as that is in essence, waht they are .. well .. sort of, just different species, lol ..

Male making daylight appearance ...




Me fishing out salamander larvae I think I spotted the outlines of lol ...