The Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus) belongs to the gigantic giant salamanders and is the largest in the world. Its length is 1.8 meters. This rare salamander lives in mountain streams and lakes in the central part of Eastern China. But due to habitat loss, this amphibian is under threat. Regular fishing and pollution also influence the decline in its numbers. environment. The Chinese giant salamander is a delicacy and is also used in Chinese medicine.
The officially registered age of the Chinese salamander is 55 years. And her heaviest weight is 180kg. For millions of years, the salamander coexisted with dinosaurs and adapted to constantly changing living conditions. It leads an aquatic lifestyle and is active at night and at dusk. For existence, it chooses fast-flowing, cold rivers, underground caves, and damp places.
The vision of the Chinese salamander is very poorly developed. But this deficiency is compensated by an excellent sense of smell, thanks to which she finds food for herself: insects, fish, frogs, crustaceans. Moreover, during hunting, it moves rather slowly along the bottom of the reservoir. To successfully catch, it is enough for her to make one sharp lunge of her head, during which she grabs her prey with sharp small teeth. Slow metabolism allows the salamander for a long time go without food.
The breeding season for this amphibian occurs in August-September, and the female lays her offspring at a depth of three meters. In one clutch there are several hundred eggs up to 6-7 mm in size. For the offspring to mature, you need to wait 2-2.5 months. The water temperature during this period should be 12ºС. Until one and a half years old, her cubs are constantly in the water. As soon as the formation of the lungs is completed, they will be able to go onto land.
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The meat of the gigantic salamander is quite tasty and edible, which has led to a reduction in the animal’s population and its inclusion in the Red Book as a species in danger of extinction. In China, in Zhangjiajie Park, a state base for breeding salamanders has been created, where a constant temperature of 16-20 oC is maintained in a 600-meter tunnel, which is ideal conditions for the reproduction of salamanders. Thus, currently in Japan, the salamander is practically not found in nature, but is bred in special nurseries.
What is this? Filming the movie "Alien 5"? Photoshop? No. This is quite an earthly animal. I didn’t believe it right away. Those who remember from the last blog already know, but I’ll tell you for new friends. Reading the details...
According to local old-timers, this impressive-sized specimen seems like a mere tadpole compared to the salamanders that were once found in the area around the city.
A 17th-century legend tells of a salamander, or, in local terms, khanzaki, 10 meters long, which ruled the roads and ate horses and cows.
Then a hero named Mitsui Hikoshiro was found, who allowed the dragon to swallow himself along with his faithful sword, which he used, killing the monster.
But it turned out that the dragon had cast a spell on the city. There was a crop failure, people began to die strange death, the hero himself died.
Very soon, the townspeople realized that the spirit of the dragon was roaming the country, and they erected a temple in the city, in which the Khanzaks began to make sacrifices.
However, scientists have their own interest in amphibians. Firstly, this is a surprisingly archaic creature that rightfully claims to be a living fossil. Moreover, this salamander turned out to be surprisingly resistant to the effects of the chytrid fungus, which has killed many amphibians from Australia to the Andes.
People flock to the scientific center in the city of Maniwa, 800 km west of Tokyo, to see the unique amphibian.
We are talking about a giant salamander, which is almost 1.7 meters long.
Japanese giant salamander (lat. Andrias japonicus) in appearance it resembles another species - the Chinese giant salamander (lat. Andras davidianus), and differs only in the location of the tubercles on the head. The average body length is more than 1 meter, it can reach a length of up to 1.44 meters and a weight of up to 25 kg.
Gigantic salamanders have a large flattened head with eyes devoid of eyelids, a body with a noticeable glenoacetobular (between the limbs of one side of the body) skin fold and tuberculate skin, a paddle-shaped tail compressed from the sides, short and thick limbs with four toes on the front paws and five on the rear
The size and appearance of the skeleton of a gigantic salamander from the Miocene deposits of Germany so struck the imagination of the Viennese physician A. Scheichzer that in 1724 he described it as Homo diluvitestis (“man - witness of the global flood”), apparently deciding that the skeletal materials were all that remains of the biblical hero who failed to escape on Noah's Ark. Only Georges Cuvier, the famous zoologist at the turn of the XYII and XYIII centuries, classified this “man” as an amphibian.
The Japanese giant salamander lives in cold mountain rivers and streams with fast current, spending the day under washed-out shores or large rocks in the western part of the island of Honshu (north of Gifu Prefecture) and on the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu (Oita Prefecture), choosing altitudes from 300 to 1000 m above sea level. Adults tolerate relatively well low temperatures. For example, a case is described when a gigantic salamander calmly survived the drop in water temperature to zero in January 1838. In the aquarium of the Moscow Zoo, even a crust of ice appeared on the water surface during cold nights.
The giant salamander is active at dusk and at night, when it crawls out to hunt. They serve her as food small fish and amphibians, crustaceans and insects. It is also capable of long-term fasting - there are cases when in captivity salamanders did not feed for two months without visible harm to themselves.
The gigantic salamander can both seek out prey, navigating by sense of smell, and lie in wait for it, hiding, and grab it with a sharp movement of its head to the side. In captivity, cases of cannibalism (eating their own kind) have been reported.
IN natural conditions at a depth of 1 - 3 m in a coastal underwater burrow in August - September, the female lays several hundred eggs with a diameter of 6 - 7 mm in the form of clear-shaped cords or beads. The male, showing care for the offspring in a specific way, protects the clutch and, with movements of his tail, creates a flow of water around it, thus increasing the aeration of the eggs. At a water temperature of 12 - 13 ° C, egg development lasts 2 - 2.5 months.
The gills disappear in the larvae probably after a year (according to other sources, in the third year of life), when their body length reaches 20 cm. In summer, adults molt almost monthly.
The meat of giant salamanders has gastronomic significance. At the beginning and middle of the last century, in the markets of the cities of Osako and Kyoto, local residents sold medium-sized salamanders for 12 - 24 guilders. At the same time, Chinese and Japanese doctors advised the use of boiled meat and broth from giant salamanders as an anti-infective agent in the treatment of consumption and diseases of the digestive system. However, due to the rarity of the animal, even then “medicines” from it cost a lot of money. As a result of overfishing, giant salamanders are now protected: they are included in the Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and in Appendix II of the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITEC). Catch Japanese salamander from nature is extremely limited, although it is quite successfully bred on Japanese farms.
Salamanders have poor eyesight; they rely on other senses to determine their position in space and the position of other objects.
The maximum recorded lifespan of the giant salamander is 55 years.
This type of salamander is also capable of regenerating, which is often noted in this genus of amphibians.
Here's an interesting video...
"The skeleton of this creature is almost identical to fossil remains that are 30 million years old," says Takeyoshi Tohimoto, director of the Hanzaki Institute near Hyogo.
Hanzaki salamander (Andriasjaponicus) has only two modern related species - this Chinese giant salamander (A. Davidianus ) , which is so close to the Japanese that it can interbreed with it, and the much smaller salamander Cryptobranchus alleganiensis , native to the southeastern United States.
"They are considered very primitive creatures, partly due to the fact that they are the only salamanders that reproduce external fertilization, like fish," says Don Church, an amphibian specialist at Conservation International.
Typically, these salamanders sit quietly under the river bank or hide in the leaves, waiting for prey to appear, which they grab with their powerful jaws.
A feat worthy of a great warrior
When the chytrid fungus appeared in Asia ten years ago, no one could have imagined that Japanese salamanders were to blame.
But last year a group of researchers from the Institute environmental problems Japan, headed by Koichi Goka, published an article from which it followed that this fungus settled exclusively on the skin of giant salamanders, which did not suffer from it in any way.
This discovery could help study the biology of this fungus, which kills millions of amphibians around the world.
It turned out that bacteria live on the skin of Japanese salamanders that can resist the peptides secreted by the fungus.
If, on this basis, it is possible to isolate substances that can reproduce this effect, scientists will be able to obtain a universal antifungal agent that will save millions of frogs and toads.
And this will be a feat worthy of heroism Japanese warrior Mitsui Hikoshiro.
Gigantic salamanders live in mountain rivers and streams with cold running water. Inhabits the western part of the island. Hondo north to Gifu Prefecture. Also known from a small island. Kyushu. Lives in mountain rivers with clean cold water at altitudes from 300 to 1000 m.a.s.l. u. m.
They spend most of their time in burrows and underwater niches under banks overhanging the water or in deep holes among stones, sunken tree trunks, stumps and snags. It is not by chance that this salamander is called gigantic. Its body can be up to 160 cm long and even longer, weighing up to 28-30 kg. This is a whole pig! But the pig can be caught with bare hands, but it’s impossible to grab a salamander; even if you grab it, you won’t be able to hold it. Her entire body is covered with a layer of mucus, and she slips out easily. In addition, large salamanders have great physical strength, and their bites are also dangerous: the animal’s mouth is armed with many small and sharp teeth, with the help of which the salamander holds prey, intercepts it and swallows it whole.
The activity of the giant salamander is crepuscular and nocturnal. Salamanders emerge from the water onto the banks of reservoirs very rarely, usually after floods caused by heavy rains.
Initially, the salamander appears to be just a sunken stump of a tree. Its huge head and body seem to be flattened on top, its long tail is compressed from the sides, its legs are short and thick, the skin of its body is warty and folded on the sides, which makes its contours blurry. The eyes are like beads, have no eyelids and are widely spaced, with almost no protrusion. The nostrils, located at the end of the muzzle, are very close together.
The color of the upper part of the body of the gigantic salamander is dark brown with dark gray streaks and very dark shapeless spots. The belly is gray with dark blurry spots and small specks. All this camouflages the salamander very well among a variety of bottom objects, stones and aquatic vegetation. The salamander either searches for its prey, slowly moving along the bottom of the reservoir, or lies in wait, lying on the bottom and not showing any movements. But as soon as a fish, frog, insect or crayfish approaches, there is a sharp, lightning-fast movement of the head - and the prey is in the teeth. It feeds on fish, amphibians and other small animals.
The Japanese giant salamander molts 4-5 times a year. The cuticle that lags behind during molting slides off the entire body in shreds, flakes and is partially eaten by the molting animal. During molting, which lasts several days, the salamander makes frequent movements with its body, as if vibrating it. This achieves washing away the lagging areas of the shed cuticle from the surface of the body.
During breeding, salamanders live in pairs. The male not only guards the nest, but also helps with better aeration. With its strong tail, it periodically stirs the water and does not allow it to stagnate: the embryos need oxygen.
In August-September, the female lays several hundred small eggs with a diameter of 6-7 mm. The clutch is usually placed in a coastal burrow at a depth of 1-3 m. The eggs are protected by the male, who uses his tail to create a current of water for better aeration of the clutch.
The development of eggs lasts 60-80 days depending on the water temperature. This duration of development compared to the development of eggs of many other amphibians (2-8 days) is explained by the fact that the eggs of giant salamanders develop at a temperature of +12-15° C. warm water salamanders do not survive: they somehow endure up to +18° C, and above that they begin to suffocate. The larvae emerging from the eggs turn into adult forms in about 11-12 months. The length of the larvae emerging from the eggs is about 30 mm. Salamanders grow quickly, and they have a good appetite.
In Japan, simply put, the gigantic salamander was eaten, in China... they are finishing it, and if the persecution of gourmets does not stop, then in the very near future the gigantic salamander - the largest amphibian animal of our time - will bitterly have to be included in the black list of animals that have disappeared forever from the face of the Earth. The giant salamander is registered in the International Red Book as an endangered animal. But here's the problem. This salamander has very tasty meat, which is why people pursue it.
In the old days, hunting salamanders was a type of sport hunting, but now this hunting has become illegal and turned into ordinary poaching for the pleasure of tasting a delicious dish. The Japanese tried to breed gigantic salamanders in artificial conditions, and their many years of attempts were crowned with success. imitate natural environment The habitat of these animals turned out to be difficult. Special nurseries with deep flow channels were created. The eggs laid by the salamanders were removed and placed in an incubator, where they developed.
Currently, the species is under strict protection. Catching and export are extremely limited. In Japan it is successfully bred on farms.
But I remembered who she reminds me of! Yes, that's it!
Niramin - Sep 2nd, 2015
There are 2 species of giant salamanders: the Chinese and Japanese giant salamanders, living in the eastern part of China and on the Japanese islands of Shikoku, Honshu and Kyushu. Giant salamanders have not been found anywhere else on Earth.
The Chinese giant salamander has a grayish-brown color of varying intensities, which gives the appearance of spotting. The abdomen is lighter than the rest, with dark spots. The head and body are wide and flattened. The tail is short and resembles an oar. The body is warty, resembling a wet stone sticking out of the water. The eyes are small, widely spaced, there are no eyelids. The front paws have 4 toes, the hind paws have 5 toes. The length of the animal including the tail is up to 180 cm, weighs up to 70 kg. Lives up to 55 years.
Ideal living conditions for the salamander are clean mountain rivers and large streams. During the day she rests on the river bank among the stones, and at night she goes hunting. She has poor eyesight, but a good sense of smell. The giant salamander feeds on fish and other river inhabitants, and can also grab small mammals. Nature has endowed it with a powerful jaw and small teeth. The jaws are so powerful that the victim, once caught, will not escape.
From the age of 5, the female salamander becomes an adult and is ready to have offspring. After mating, the female lays up to 500 eggs in a hole dug on a steep river bank. The male looks after the eggs, and then the babies. After 2-2 and a half months, the eggs will hatch into larvae, which will live in the water and breathe through gills until they grow up. In adults, the gills disappear.
The Japanese giant salamander is similar to its relative, the Chinese salamander. The only difference is that the resident of the Japanese islands is much smaller (the length including the tail reaches 1.5 m, weighs up to 25 kg) and she has tubercles on her head.
In Japan, salamander meat is eaten; it is considered a delicacy, so an animal as defenseless against humans as the salamander is almost on the verge of extinction. Now these animals have begun to be raised on special farms.
Photo: Giant salamander 
Video: Japanese schoolboy found a giant salamander (news)
Externally, the salamander resembles a huge lizard, being its “relative”. This is a classic endemic to the Japanese islands, that is, in wildlife lives only there. This species is one of the largest salamanders on Earth.
Description of the species
This species of salamander was discovered in the 18th century. In 1820, it was first discovered and described by a German scientist named Siebold during his scientific activity in Japan. The length of the animal's body reaches one and a half meters including the tail. The weight of an adult salamander is about 35 kilograms.
The shape of the animal's body is not distinguished by grace, as, for example, in lizards. It is slightly flattened, distinguished by a large head and a tail compressed in a vertical plane. Small and juvenile salamanders have gills that disappear when they reach sexual maturity.
The salamander has a very slow metabolism. This circumstance allows her to go without food for a long time, and also to survive in conditions of insufficient food supply. Poor vision has led to an increase in other senses. Giant salamanders have acute hearing and a good sense of smell.
Another one interesting feature salamanders - the ability to regenerate tissue. This term refers to the restoration of tissues and even entire organs, if they were lost for any reason. The most striking and familiar example to many is the growth of a new tail in lizards to replace what they easily and voluntarily leave behind when trying to catch them.
Lifestyle
This type of salamander lives exclusively in water and is active at night. For a comfortable living, the animal needs a current, so salamanders often settle in fast mountain streams and rivers. The water temperature is also important - the lower the better.
The salamander's diet consists of fish and various crustaceans. In addition, it quite often eats small amphibians and aquatic insects.
The giant salamander lays small eggs, up to 7 millimeters in diameter. A special hole dug at a depth of 1-3 meters is used as a “nest”. In one clutch, as a rule, there are several hundred eggs, which require constant renewal of the environment. aquatic environment. The male is responsible for creating an artificial current, using his tail to periodically disperse the water in the area of the clutch.
Eggs mature for almost a month and a half. The small salamanders that are born are larvae no more than 30 millimeters long. They breathe through gills and are able to move independently.
Salamander and man
Despite the unsightly appearance, this species of salamander has nutritional value. Salamander meat is tender and has a pleasant taste. It is actively consumed by the inhabitants of Japan, considered a delicacy.
As usual, uncontrolled hunting of these animals has led to a sharp reduction in their numbers, and today salamanders are raised “for food” on special farms. In the wild, the population is cause for concern. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has classified the species as Near Threatened. This means that in the absence of measures to support and create optimal living conditions, salamanders may begin to die out.
Today, the number of salamanders is not large, but quite stable. They live off the coast of the Japanese island of Honshu, as well as the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu.
Tianzishan Geopark, famous for its mountains amazing beauty, and Sosiyu Park, notable primarily for the huge Huanglong Cave, the largest hall of which can accommodate ten thousand people. In the last five thousand years there have been no significant earthquakes there, so tall openwork-airy stone pillars, overgrown with subtropical vegetation, surrounded by clouds and glorified by James Cameron in his famous film “Avatar,” live and thrive there.
It flows from the mountains there pure water, and salamanders are an indicator of the ecological well-being of the area. Chinese giant salamanders are endemic; they now live in the wild only in Hunan province; these amphibians survived dinosaurs. This is what puzzled biochemists.
People have long been trying to understand how salamanders regenerate severed tails, limbs, and jaws. At the site of injury, after contact with the mucus that constantly covers their skin, they form a protective membrane that protects against blood loss, and subsequently, at the site of the missing limb, a blastema appears - a mass of unspecialized cells that wait for the body’s “order” in order to acquire “specialization.” "and become cells of skin, muscles, bones and blood vessels. It is curious that salamanders are able to regenerate not only limbs, but also individual organs of the body, for example, the eye lens or intestines.
In adult mammals (unlike embryos), such a miracle will not happen - cellular specialization has already ended. But what’s interesting is that humans, like salamanders, have genes necessary for tissue regeneration. But our first defense system does not allow these genes to work. Apparently, during evolution, the immune and regenerative systems became incompatible with each other, and the body had to choose. Salamanders use primitive regenerative, and humans use immune. It protects us from infections, but at the same time blocks “self-repair”. But the ancient “instructions” for growing new organs are stored there somewhere! But how to make it “turn on” when required?
“For reference: the giant salamander is a genus of tailed amphibians of the cryptobranch family and is represented by two species: the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus) and the Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus), which differ in size, habitat and location of tubercles on the head,” says Pavel Alexandrovich . – Today, it is the largest amphibian, which can reach 2 m in length and weigh up to 100 kg. The officially recorded maximum age of the giant salamander is 100 years. This unique amphibian lived alongside dinosaurs millions of years ago and managed to survive and adapt to new living conditions. The giant salamander leads an aquatic lifestyle, is active at dusk and at night, prefers cold and clean mountain streams and rivers, damp caves and underground rivers. The dark brown coloring with darker blurry spots makes the salamander invisible against the background of rocky river bottoms. The body and large head of the salamander are flattened, the tail, which makes up almost half of the entire length, is paddle-shaped, the front legs have four fingers and the hind legs have five fingers, the eyelidless eyes are set wide apart, and the nostrils are very close together.
The salamander has poor eyesight, which is compensated by an excellent sense of smell, with which it finds frogs, fish, crustaceans, and insects, slowly moving along the river bottom. The salamander obtains food by hiding at the bottom of the river. With a sharp thrust of the head, it captures and holds the victim with jaws with small teeth. The salamander's metabolism is slow, which allows it long time go without food.
In August-September, salamanders begin their breeding season. The female lays eggs in horizontal burrows under water at a depth of up to three meters, which is absolutely not typical for amphibians.
Caviar matures in 60-70 days at a water temperature of about 12°C. In this case, as a rule, the male constantly provides aeration of the eggs, creating a flow of water with his tail. The larvae are about 30 mm long, have three pairs of external gills, limb buds and a long tail with a wide fin fold. Small salamanders are constantly in the water for up to a year and a half, until their lungs are finally formed and they can go to land. But the salamander can also breathe through its skin. At the same time, the giant salamander reaches sexual maturity. The meat of the giant salamander is quite tasty and edible, which has led to a reduction in the animal’s population and its inclusion in the Red Book as a species in danger of extinction.